Both Wright and his mother agree that Keith’s basketball career did not have the most auspicious start.

Keith was competing against students who had been playing their whole lives, and his inexperience showed on the court.

Tabron knew that her son needed plenty of work if he intended to play in college, so she picked up a second job cleaning homes and apartments in order to pay for extra training and conditioning for her son. Sometimes Wright would join his mother and help her clean. Their sacrifices paid off when the family phone rang non-stop during Wright’s senior year.

He received calls from colleges across the country, including every Ivy League school. In the end, the future Ivy League Player of the Year narrowed his choices to Harvard and Princeton. Tabron believes that her son’s recruiting trip to Princeton was the deciding factor.

“I think, honestly, it was [then-] Princeton coach, Sydney Johnson, who helped him decide on Harvard,” Tabron remembers. “[Johnson] said to him, ‘You need to come to Princeton, because Princeton is rich with basketball history.’”

But Wright had other ideas.

“Keith turned and said, ‘I don’t want to be a part of history. I want to make history,’” Tabron notes.

Wright decided that he would write history in a Crimson uniform.  He credits his mother for swaying his decision to go to an Ivy League school.

“She always told me not to let basketball define me as a person,” Wright explains. “[She did not want people to] hear my name and associate that with just a basketball player.... The decision I made was solely my decision, but she definitely influenced that with the way that she raised me.”

In the fall of 2008, Wright said goodbye to his mother and headed to Cambridge.

He had a rough freshman season, contracting mononucleosis and suffering from an Achilles heel injury. Meanwhile, Wright’s sister Morgan was finishing her senior year of high school. When Morgan decided to head northeast to St. John’s University for her education, her mother followed.

Tabron decided to move to the Boston area, where she would be close to her two oldest children. The decision became official when she received a callback two days after sending out blind resumes.

At first, Keith was strongly opposed to his mother’s plan.

“I hated it,” Wright remembers. “I was dating someone from home at the time, and we were best friends in high school. And all my good friends were back home.”

But it did not take long for Wright to change his mind regarding his mom’s decision.