Rivals on the Court Turn a Friendship Into a Partnership
Area Standouts Wright, Freeman Headed to Hoyas

By Josh Barr
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Sitting in the bleachers before a game last month, Austin Freeman looked across the basketball court and saw a good friend. So the All-Met guard for DeMatha took out his cellphone and dialed Chris Wright, the two-time All-Met guard from St. John's.

As the schools' junior varsity teams tussled, the conversation between Freeman and Wright was relatively brief and innocent. There was no verbal jousting or gamesmanship. It was just one of the Washington area's top high school basketball players checking in with another one of the area's best players. One Georgetown recruit calling another Georgetown recruit as their teams prepared to meet before a standing room-only crowd at Trinity University on a cold winter night.

"I was just asking if he was ready to play," Freeman said. "And also to say hi."

Next season, they will be teammates. For a few more weeks, however, they are rivals and could meet again in the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference tournament that begins Thursday and concludes with Monday's championship game at American University.

That means while they talk a few times each week and mingle in the same social circle -- occasionally seeing each other at weekend parties, as they did Friday night -- for now, the talk largely steers clear from their games.

"Can't give away any strategy," Freeman, who has helped DeMatha go 2-0 this season against St. John's, said with a chuckle.

In that brief moment of laughter, there is a glimpse into the relationship of two teens whose athletic prowess has been apparent for quite some time and who live a few minutes apart in Prince George's County. There never has been taunting and no discussion of who is the better player. Heck, they've never even played one-on-one.

"We've never had any jealousy of each other," Wright said. "We've respected each other's games. Luckily, we're going to be playing together in college. It should be fun."

Their friendship also played a role in them ending up as future teammates. Freeman committed to Georgetown before last season, then Wright pledged to play for North Carolina State. But when then-coach Herb Sendek left the Wolfpack, Wright decided to reconsider -- and Freeman became a top recruiter, persistently calling Wright to talk about the possibility of finally playing together.

Georgetown is adding a pair of players with a knack for scoring. Wright, a 6-foot-1 point guard, leads the Washington area in scoring at 30.1 points per game. Earlier this season he had nine consecutive games with at least 30 points, and he has scored at least half of the Cadets' points in 15 of 27 games. Freeman, a 6-5 shooting guard who has a stronger supporting cast, averages 22.4 points and helped DeMatha finish first in the conference during the regular season. As good as they are, however, neither is one to draw attention to himself.

"We don't boast about stuff," Wright said. "We're not showy. We just do what we do."

They have similar characteristics. Both have played competitively since elementary school. Wright remembers first meeting Freeman before the two were 10 years old, when Wright played for the Maryland Rising Stars and Freeman for the Bowie Ballcats. They saw each other periodically at various leagues and tournaments growing up and would talk about playing together, but it rarely happened.

Still, as Freeman went to DeMatha and Wright to St. John's, the two emerged as potential standouts during their freshman year, when Wright started and Freeman was a key reserve. Regardless of their success, they remained humble. While they occasionally are flashy on the court -- Freeman began the game at Trinity with an alley-oop dunk, and his slam in the team's second meeting is well remembered -- they are mild-mannered. That calm demeanor, though, masks their competitive fire.

"We do drills and things in practice, and he's working the hardest," St. John's Coach Paul DeStefano said of Wright. "We do defensive drills, and he's the guy working the hardest. He always wants to compete. He hates losing."

For Wright, that carries from the start of the game to the finish. Because while Wright stands more than a full head shorter than teammate Vlad Moldoveanu (who is 6-11 and has accepted a scholarship to play for George Mason), it is Wright who jumps center for the Cadets. That might surprise some, but Wright said he holds his own, noting he took the opening tip-off from DeMatha's Jerai Grant -- who is 6-10 -- in last year's WCAC title game.

"They don't say anything when I win the taps," Wright said.

Their commitment to getting better has been evident for years. Wright was one of the area's first high schoolers to begin working with a personal trainer. While it often is difficult to get basketball players to bulk up, Wright quickly added 22 pounds of muscle and plenty of explosiveness to his frame by lifting weights and eating more often, including countless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

"He went from being a pretty good leaper to dunking the heck out of the ball," said Alan Stein, who co-owns Elite Athlete Training Systems and worked with Wright the past three years. "Chris set it off for me in the area. He was like a walking billboard."

While Wright's success has been easy to see in the scorebook -- not even Hall of Fame coach Morgan Wootten is certain of another local player to top 2,000 points in his high school career -- Freeman often is required to carry less of the load for DeMatha. When the time comes, however, Freeman also can be the go-to player; he averaged 29 points in two victories over Wright and St. John's.

"They're different, but a large part of that is probably out of necessity," DeMatha Coach Mike Jones said. "In seventh and eighth grade they were clearly very talented. It was clear they both were going to have bright futures. They chose to go to two different schools where their games developed differently."