Bob Ford: Villanova's Cunningham becomes leader

When Villanova coach Jay Wright recruited a lanky forward named Dante Cunningham from Potomac High School, just outside Washington, he liked several things about him.

Wright liked the young man's athletic, economical game, liked his steady personality, and, not as a small bonus, also liked the fact that Cunningham's parents were both career members of the United States Air Force.

Looking several moves ahead at the chess game that is college recruiting, the coach saw a time when that sort of discipline and training would be useful in the 2007-08 basketball season. It was a season in which Wright knew he probably would have no seniors on his team, a time when the juniors would have to be the surrogate coaches on the floor and in the locker room.

"Both of his parents are military officers," Wright said. "I thought when we got him, this was going to make him a great leader. What I found out was, it made him a great soldier. He listened. He did what he was told all the time, but he didn't want to tell anybody else. It's taken time. It's taken three years for him to be a great leader, where he takes control and tells people what to do. He's really doing that now."

The Villanova Wildcats have grown into their roles this season. They have grown from a team that was more than a little scattered and unpredictable in the middle of the schedule into a settled group that has advanced improbably to the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA tournament.

The maturation process got the Wildcats through the first two games of the tournament and sent them to tomorrow's Midwest Regional semifinal match in Detroit against the Kansas Jayhawks.

Cunningham, like the rest of the underappreciated frontcourt members of the team, won't be the focus in the game. Point guard Scottie Reynolds, along with burgeoning freshman star Corey Stokes, will get most of the attention. That's fine with Cunningham. But if the Wildcats win, and even if they don't, just reaching this stage had a lot to do with Cunningham's transition from soldier to officer.

"It was a gradual progression," Wright said. "If you look at his entire career, he's always been a complementary player, always willing to do the dirty work. I think it's taken almost a year and a half to get that out of his system.

"One of our challenges this year was for Dante to become a go-to guy. This year, he plays as hard as anybody in the country, night in and night out. He does whatever it takes."

Last weekend in Tampa, Fla., Cunningham was a defensive rock in the first-round win as the Wildcats fronted the big Clemson post players, frustrated them in the second half, and forced the Tigers' perimeter players into quick, unsuccessful shots. He capped that with a huge drive down the lane in the closing minutes, resulting in a strong lefthanded layup that gave Villanova a three-point lead that grew from there.

In the next game, after being held scoreless in the opening half against Siena, partly because of foul trouble, Cunningham went on the offensive, scoring 14 points in the second half as the Wildcats took advantage of a rare favorable matchup on the inside. Whatever it takes, as the coach says.

"The coach told us [juniors] that it's our team now and we have to take care of it," Cunningham said. "We took that on our shoulders."

The biggest shouldering came during the team's five-game losing streak in late January and early February. Cunningham helped keep his teammates from splintering. He isn't loud, which makes his words important. And he must have said the right things.

"You have to be able to talk to them, to get in their faces a little bit," Cunningham said. "And sometimes, it's not as verbal or as visible to most. But I grab them, tell them . . . just let them know they're not getting it done or something's not going right."

It was a role Cunningham didn't have to play when Mike Nardi, Curtis Sumpter and Will Sheridan were around. Certainly not when Randy Foye and Allan Ray were there. But now the role is his.

"A lot of times, Dante does things that people don't see," Wright said. "He's not out there screaming at people, but he'll pull them aside, and when he says something, it means a lot. I could take a lesson from him there. He's our leader."

"I love it," Cunningham said. "Every basketball player strives for that, to know it's your team and you run it. Win or lose, it's on you. Regardless, it's on you."

That's not a soldier talking anymore. That's a leader, the kind that can get a young basketball team through a bad losing streak with encouraging words and his own consistent example.

Growing up, Cunningham said his was a normal home. The military was left at the office by his parents - for the most part.

"I definitely know what an order is," he said, with a laugh.

And now, in the season when it was finally needed, even if it doesn't always sound like an order, he knows how to give one, too.