The urge is a recurring one that constantly jumps into Jolene Anderson's mind.

It drives her to get off the couch, walk out into the cold winter night and head back to the Kohl Center.

It takes her down to the arena control entrance, where she coaxes arena personnel into letting her in.

And it brings her out onto the court — either the arena's main court or the Nicholas-Johnson Pavilion, whichever is available.

The setting doesn't really matter.

"I just want to shoot."

Anderson, a senior guard on the University of Wisconsin women's basketball team who's poised to break the school's all-time scoring record, has never had to force herself to work on her game — not as a youngster growing up in tiny Port Wing along the shores of Lake Superior and certainly not now.

She's a good shooter, too, and is considered by many to be one of the best pure scorers in the nation.

Her mother, Julie, played basketball at UW-Stout, and taught Jolene the fluid motion she's used to light up many an opposing team.

So these extra workouts are merely review sessions, where she concentrates on the tweaks she's made to her shot over the years — namely making sure she's not fading away.

And her forays to the arena say a lot about Anderson's life.

"Jolene likes to hide. You'll never see her walking the malls or walking State Street," said her father, Jim Anderson. "If she's not playing basketball, it's hard to find her."

Unlikely beginnings

That's the way it's always been for Jolene Anderson.

She began dribbling a Wisconsin basketball when she was 4 years old.

She'd bounce balls off the living room ceiling.

She'd shoot on a hoop attached to the family's garage.

And after her family decided to sell its dairy cattle, she begged her parents to put a hoop up in their barn's hay mound.

When it snowed, Anderson would shovel off either court — there were cracks in the barn walls — so she could shoot.

If she needed someone to rebound, she'd get her older sister, Jennifer, who went on to play at Silver Lake College in Manitowoc, to come out and play.

And she didn't shy away from mixing it up with her three older male cousins, who Anderson says were about a foot taller than her growing up.

"If you didn't know where she was, you could always just go outside and listen for the basketball bounce," Jim Anderson said. Jolene Anderson quickly made a name for herself in the tiny community — the latest state population estimate has Port Wing's at just 424 — and by the time she was in junior high, her parents were making weekly 180-mile trips to Menomonie during the summer so she could play AAU ball with the Wisconsin Viking Club.

They also were having to listen to people telling them to take their daughter to a larger school than Port Wing's South Shore, which houses all the district's students from kindergarten through 12th grade.

But they didn't, and it certainly didn't kill the buzz about Jolene.

She averaged 21.9 points per game as a freshman at South Shore, and led the Cardinals to their first WIAA Division 4 state tournament appearance as a sophomore.

And while Anderson had been getting recruiting letters from NCAA Division I schools since ninth grade, the next summer — before her junior year — she really grabbed national attention.

Anderson led her AAU team to a Sweet 16 showing at the national tournament in Arlington, Texas, and earned All-America honors despite playing up one age level.

"That summer is where I just saw her just develop into that player that I thought was going to be big time," said Mark Noll, Anderson's coach with Wisconsin Viking Club who is now the coach at Division III Dubuque. "She could compete at a high level play after play after play. Some kids can do it, they might be able to put on a little stretch for a little bit. She can just keep doing it the whole game."

She followed that up by averaging 31.5 points a game during her junior season at South Shore, and then scored 40 or more points in five straight games at the AAU national tournament in Detroit the following summer.

Then came Anderson's senior year, a season that saw her break the state records for points in a game (58 against Bayfield), season (956) and career (2,881).

She led the Cardinals to a state runner-up finish, setting another scoring mark along the way — most points in a tournament game, with 46 in a semifinal win over Elkhart Lake-Glenbeulah.

"It was just too easy for her in high school," said Cleveland State coach Kate Peterson Abiad, a UW assistant and recruiting coordinator when Anderson gave the Badgers an oral commitment in February 2003.

Making her move

Truth be told, UW didn't have to work real hard to land Anderson, who grew up wanting to be a Badger.

She painted the steps leading to her bedroom in the basement — nicknamed "The Dungeon," where she'd break down tapes of women's college and WNBA games — of her family's house red and white.

And when a letter from then-UW coach Jane Albright came in the mail, the inquiries from schools such as Minnesota, Marquette and Drake didn't stand much of a chance.

"Once Wisconsin started recruiting me, everybody else just kind of hit the back burner," said Anderson, who has all the letters saved in a binder back home.

She didn't flinch from her commitment, either, when Albright resigned and Lisa Stone left Drake for UW.

But despite all the accolades she was bringing to Madison, there were plenty of naysayers.

People doubted Anderson could make the jump from the Division 4 high school level to the Big Ten Conference.

The whispers came from southern Wisconsin, from people who hadn't seen her play other than at the state tournament.

But there were those from surrounding towns who didn't think her game was good enough — and even a few in Port Wing.

"There was a few, but, you know, there's always going to be a few wherever you come from," Anderson said.

Some wanted her to go to Minnesota-Duluth or UW-Superior just so they could watch her play, too.

Still, while Anderson was confident of her ability to make the transition, she came to UW in the summer of 2004 knowing she needed to improve her defense, stamina and get better with her left hand on the offensive end.

She also had to adapt to a radically different environment at a school with more than 40,000 students.

The first class she walked into that fall was a lecture with about 500 people — larger than the town she grew up in.

And no one envisioned what transpired in her first season with the Badgers — not even her parents, who were just hoping she'd get a chance to play.

"We were just happy that I got a scholarship and I was going to play on the team," said Anderson, who was named Big Ten Freshman of the Year after averaging 17.8 points per game to lead the Badgers and rank fourth in the conference.

It got better from there.

Anderson was invited to try out for the USA Basketball Under-19 World Championships team and made the cut, sending a girl who had never been out of the country before and who is "deathly afraid of flying" across the Atlantic to Hungary and Tunisia.

And after winning a gold medal, she returned to Madison looking markedly different.

Putting in the time

Anderson came to UW well aware that conditioning was an area she needed to improve in.

She ran track at South Shore, competing as a sprinter and making the state meet in the long jump and shot put as a senior, but that was the most extensive running she did.

"I knew I was going to be out of shape, but I didn't know I was going to be that much out of shape," said Anderson, who enlisted the help of UW trainers Karen Bloch and Bryan Miller (currently at Oregon State). Between her work in Madison and with the U.S. team, Anderson lost about 30 pounds over the summer.

It wasn't just a one-time deal, either. The past two summers — before her junior and senior years — she has traveled to South Bend, Ind., to work out under the tutelage of Denise Ianello, an assistant coach for the Badgers during Anderson's freshman year.

Anderson did workouts borrowed from the Notre Dame football team — that's not surprising, since Ianello's husband, Rob, is the wide receivers coach.

Spending part of two more summers with the U.S. team — Anderson won gold medals at the FIBA Americas Under-20 Championships in Mexico in 2006 and at the FIBA Under-21 World Championships last summer in Russia — also have helped get her to her current weight of 160 pounds.

More importantly, though, her minutes per game at UW have increased every year.

Look who's talking

That's not the only change in Anderson.

When she first came to UW, she was reserved, to say the least.

"When I say quiet, I don't mean her voice (wasn't) loud," Badgers senior guard Janese Banks said, "but there wasn't a lot said."

And while she's still more of a leader by example, Anderson — UW's co-captain with Banks for the second straight season — is pushing herself to step out of her comfort zone this year.

The girl with the sarcastic personality is talking more in huddles and in the locker room.

Her goal is to eat dinner with every player on the team before the end of the season.

And she was involved in a game of Kemps — a card game — during the Badgers' Thanksgiving tournament in Malibu, Calif., that go so rowdy the players had to move into the team room at the hotel after being told to quiet down.

"I see Jolene really having fun this year," Stone said.

Anderson and Stone have continued to grow closer. They have a race to text message each other on the morning of game days — "Whether I have to set my alarm to get up at six and text her, beat her first, I'll do whatever as long as she doesn't beat me," Anderson said — and Stone sends her star pupil a quote to focus on each week.

That's typical of Anderson's friendships. She doesn't make casual acquaintances and she certainly doesn't big-time people.

For example, last Monday night she was in DeKalb, Ill., to watch former teammate Shari' Welton, who came to UW as a freshman with Anderson before transferring after their sophomore season, play for Northern Illinois.

And she stays in touch with her high school teammates. "That's the way she is," Jim Anderson said. "You're a friend for life."

No one, though, is closer to her than her mom.

They talk daily on the phone, and Julie Anderson sends her daughter an e-mail every morning before she heads off to work.

Jolene has until 3:20 p.m. to reply or "she thinks that I'm stuck up or (there's) something wrong or that I'm too busy for her."

"Her and I, we've gone through some tough times and we've gone through some high times together," said Jolene Anderson, whose parents make the 350-mile trip from Port Wing to Madison for nearly all of UW's home games.

None probably tougher than July 8, when Julie Anderson's mother, Nancy Rantala, passed away after being diagnosed with stomach cancer in May.

It was the same day Anderson won her third gold medal with the U.S. team in Moscow.

"It's just devastating," said Anderson, who was celebrating with her teammates when USA Basketball Assistant Executive Director Carol Callan told her the news.

Simply the best

Anderson has dedicated the rest of her career to Rantala, who used to e-mail her after every game.

Anderson also writes "Grandma" and "Run faster" on her left wrist tape before each game — Rantala used to tell her after losses last year that the Badgers would have won had they run faster.

So far, Anderson is doing Rantala proud.

She began the season with a career-high 37 points against Cleveland State, and is averaging 20 points per game heading into UW's Big Ten opener at Purdue on Friday.

But it's not just the scoring.

The 5-foot-8 Anderson leads the Badgers (7-3) in rebounding (7.7 per game) and is UW's best defender. She's played power forward when an injury sidelined freshman Tara Steinbauer and held her own in the post.

"I tell our players a lot, 'Jolene's not going to let you lose this game. Go listen to her or get her the ball or talk to her,' " said Stone, who calls Anderson "hands down" the best player she's ever coached.

Anderson, who sits 80 points behind Barb Franke's school-record 1,994 points, is on pace to surpass the mark at Iowa Jan. 13.

She should also finish her career with the most points of any player, man or woman, at UW.

She became the first Badger to lead the Big Ten in scoring last season and has scored in double figures in 99 of her 103 career games, including 39 straight.

She's also the only player in UW history to rank in the top 10 of four major statistical categories.

"She's going to go down in the history books here as the best to ever play at Wisconsin," Stone said.

But Anderson feels the same way she did back in 2004, when she was approaching Niagara's Anna DeForge's state high school career points record.

Her parents emphasized the team aspect of the sport when she was growing up, and that's always stuck with her.

She's never been one to set individual goals for herself, and when Stone makes the players come up with three before the season, Anderson usually writes team-oriented answers.

But she does acknowledge that, in the future, it will be cool to see her name and hometown in the record books.

She'll graduate in May with a sociology degree, and likely has a career in the WNBA ahead of her — scouts watched her in Malibu and in the Badgers' loss at Virginia earlier this season, and some are scheduled to attend UW practices throughout the season.

Anderson has even started to get e-mails from agents, which she simply forwards to Stone and director of basketball operations Stephanie Schmitz.

Anderson will worry about that after the season. She's got other things to think about right now — like getting in another 20-minute shooting session.

"It's just a matter of putting your time into it, doing whatever it takes," Anderson said. "You don't have to move out of a small community just to get recognition. That's what I just want to send back to people in Port Wing, really. Just stay where you are and they'll come find you if you're that good."