The 1999–2001 Willowridge High School boys' basketball team in Missouri City, Texas, just southwest of Houston, went 75–1 over two years. Two state titles. A 62-game winning streak. A national No. 2 ranking. And in the spring of 2001, that team produced something almost no high school basketball program in America had ever produced: two McDonald's All-Americans in the same graduating class.
One was T.J. Ford, the lightning-quick point guard who would go to the University of Texas, win the 2003 Naismith National Player of the Year award, and become a top-10 NBA draft pick. The other was Daniel Ewing.
George Daniel Ewing Jr. was born on March 26, 1983, in Milton, Florida, the son of George and Brenda Ewing. The family moved to the Houston suburbs, and by the time Daniel arrived at Willowridge — a public school in the Fort Bend Independent School District that already had a basketball pedigree — he was a 6-foot-3 left-handed combo guard with a textbook stroke and the maturity to share a backcourt with a future first-round point guard without complaining about touches. Ford handled the rock. Ewing scored. They went 39-0 their senior year. Ewing averaged 18 points per game leading Willowridge to the Texas Class 5A state championship. He scored 10 points in the 2001 McDonald's All-American Game. Prepstars ranked him 31st nationally. The Sporting News had him 29th. Rivals had him 16th at his position.
He committed to Duke in July 2000, before his senior year. He hadn't even officially visited yet when the call came from Coach K. "For me it was an easy decision once I got that call from Coach K and they offered me that scholarship," Ewing said years later. "That day I was ready to tell all the other coaches I was going to Duke University. The tradition he's built here with teams and coaches and having relationships with former players meant something to me as a freshman coming to Duke."
The Texas-to-Duke pipeline was thin in those years. Coach K had not signed a Texan in years. Ewing was Krzyzewski's last Texas pull until Rasheed Sulaimon eleven years later. He chose Duke over Texas — over his hometown school, over playing alongside Ford on the same college team — because he believed in what K was building. T.J. went to Austin. Daniel went to Durham. They never played college basketball against each other, but the bond from Willowridge stayed.