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Head Coach John Thompson III draws much of his talent from the D.C. area.

For a small Catholic school without a state, planted in between the Universities of Maryland and Virginia, it would be easy for Georgetown to get lost in the recruiting shuffle. But a commitment to seeing local high school students early and often has given Head Coach John Thompson III a leg up around the Beltway.

New York is the basketball Mecca and Philadelphia has Broad Street, but D.C., Maryland and Northern Virginia are producing some of nation’s best ball players, and one needs to look no further than Georgetown’s most recent additions to the NBA to see how local talent has changed the face of the program. Green, Roy Hibbert (COL ’08) and Michael Sweetney all came from inside the Beltway.

In recent years, the D.C. area has become a font for future NCAA and NBA stars.

The 2002-2003 season and Linas Kleiza of Montrose Christian (Md.) marked the flood of D.C. area players making their mark on the NBA and college after a period of time when the District fell well behind New York and Philadelphia in national prominence.

The next season was even richer with Rudy Gay, Green, Hibbert and Sam Young of Pittsburgh graduating.

Green’s Oklahoma City Thunder teammate Kevin Durant was The Washington Post’s player of the year in 2005-2006.

And Michael Beasley, the most talented freshman in college last season and a favorite for the NBA’s rookie of the year award this year, grew up in and around Fredrick, Md., and most of the half dozen high schools and preparatory academies he attended are in the area.

Georgetown is small. There is no getting around the fact when talking about the Hoyas and recruiting.

With an undergraduate population one-sixth the size of Maryland’s, no on-campus arena and a shared practice facility, something else draws the area’s best to McDonough.

“The whole basketball organization and the school itself is like a big family, and that’s what draws a lot of people here,” sophomore guard Austin Freeman says.

Besides a beautiful campus, Georgetown had to rely on its history and Allen Iverson’s popularity to keep recruits interested while they suffered through the NIT years of Head Coach Craig Esherick (MSB ’78, LAW ’82).

Iverson was not the best role model, and his off-court troubles made the news, but his prolific scoring and devil-may-care attitude caught attention and made him popular.

“Just watching [Iverson] growing up, that’s who I wanted to be,” says Villanova guard Scottie Reynolds of Herndon, Va.

“I had the braids back then, No. 3 [jersey] in high school, baggy shorts, everything. I’m from Virginia, I played on the Boo Williams [AAU team], A.I. is just somebody you respect.”

While the flashy Iverson kept Georgetown in the minds of aspiring eighth graders across the country, Georgetown the institution, the elite school that could ball, never lost its place with those nearby.

“Georgetown was always a great place. The campus is very beautiful,” Villanova senior forward Dwayne Anderson says.

Anderson, a D.C. native, says he grew up a Georgetown fan like Reynolds even though Maryland was the more successful team during their formative years.

“The thing about Georgetown is, it’s not a state school, it’s not like that. It’s either something you grow up into or something you fall in love with,” Reynolds explains.

“It has its own different kind of setting how they reach people. . But then you see the basketball side where it’s not Maryland, it’s not UVA.”

Reynolds, like Georgetown junior forward DaJuan Summers, believes what makes Georgetown different is the sense of history the school has and the physical connection to that history in Head Coach John Thompson III.

“Players and fans know that if you’re going to be a part of Georgetown, you have to have a winning spirit,” Summers says.

“You’ve got to be a winner. And that’s part of the reason why I committed here, just the history and the legacy and knowing I’d become a better overall basketball player being in this atmosphere.”

aking initial contact with high-caliber recruits has been made easier by Georgetown’s success on the court reestablishing it as a legitimate contender and churning up memories of the 1980s heyday and, more importantly, Georgetown winning basketball games.

Thompson’s arrival and subsequent success made Georgetown a more attractive choice for local recruits.

While Georgetown used to be a school with a winning past, it was stuck in mediocrity for the better part of the 1990s and early 2000s.

The transition to being the favorite made Georgetown the local school to play for even after Maryland’s national championship in 2002.

“I mean at the end of the day, doesn’t everything come down to winning?” Thompson says.

“That may sound cold; that’s reality. At the end of the day, it’s about winning. Now, you take our winning as well as everything else this institution has to offer, and then I think that can separate us.”

And it has separated Georgetown.

The best local recruits have been high on Georgetown since Thompson established himself.

Freeman and freshman guard Jason Clark were The Washington Post’s player of the year their senior years, and all four players from the D.C. area on this season’s roster were named to the prestigious All-Met first team their senior year of high school.

Of The Washington Post’s last eight players of the year, two play for Georgetown, one is a senior at Villanova and four, Kevin Durant, Rudy Gay, Linas Kleiza and Delonte West start for NBA teams.

As much as he has made winning a priority, Thompson, has done just as well creating meaningful relationships with players and an institution young players want to be a part of – and a local institution that takes care of its own.

“It is important to Georgetown’s mission. It is important to President DeGioia that Georgetown is an integral part of what goes on in Washington, D.C.,” Thompson says.

“Georgetown’s presence in Washington is something in athletics and beyond athletics, basketball and beyond basketball. It is something that is important to our president, something that is important to me.”

Bishop O’Connell (Arlington, Va.) Head Coach Joseph Wooten spent four years with Clark, the first player from O’Connell to come to Georgetown. Wooten says that Thompson made it a point to make a personal connection with Clark, especially since there was no previous O’Connell-Georgetown connection.

“I know Jason felt like he had a great relationship with the coaches and felt like it was an up-and-coming program and they were really turning things around. . With Jason, they started recruiting him when he was a freshman in high school. It didn’t mean they were offering scholarships at that point, but they were there and they were letting him know they were interested.”

Besides getting to players early, Thompson goes his own way on the recruiting trail, unfazed by reported rankings or how many teams may be interested in a recruit. According to Wooten, Thompson and his staff have complete faith in their own judgment.

“The thing I like about them is they know what they want and they go after what they want,” Wooten says.

“They don’t worry about what else is going on around them. A lot of times you get the, `Oh, who else is recruiting him,’ but they don’t care. . It goes both ways. Let’s say nobody is going after a kid, they’ll go after him if they think he’s the right kid.”

Thompson’s job is made easier by the sheer number of Division I recruits in the area and a level of high school play not seen in most other cities.

ore important to Thompson and his heady Princeton-style offense is the quality of local play and the coaches that direct it.

“There are a lot of other pockets you can go to where they have a lot of good players, but they aren’t really getting schooled. But the level of the coaching in this area, I think, is terrific,” Thompson says.

With so much well-coached talent nearby, Thompson can be discerning with the high school players he makes offers to, and that proximity lets him monitor progress of those he is considering.

Pittsburgh Head Coach Jamie Dixon laments the comparative dearth of high-quality high school players in his area and the difficulty he has in watching players develop.

“You see a kid his junior year of high school and some people say he’s the best player in his year based on what he did his sophomore year,” Dixon said.

“Then you may not get a chance to see him all of his senior year of high school. There’s a lot of development that can go on with a 17-year-old kid – his senior year of high school – and the player you get maybe isn’t the player you thought you saw. And that happens a lot, you may not actually see a guy in person for a whole year.”

For Thompson, the best local high school players are no more than a half-hour’s drive away, and Wooten says that Thompson has distinguished himself by the number and quality of appearances he makes at high school games.

“It’s not just John or Craig Esherick. . Every single coach has his own way of doing things,” Wooten says. “One thing that John and his staff do a really nice job of is they’re in the gym a lot. They do a good job of getting out and seeing the players play.”

The word “family” comes up often when talking to recruits and coaches about Thompson and Georgetown – not because Thompson is following his father at Georgetown, but because those players and coaches see a coach who cares about his players and is building an honest program.

When freshman center Greg Monroe committed to Georgetown a year ago, he said that Georgetown was smaller than his hometown’s LSU, and he liked that sense of community.

When freshman center Henry Sims committed to the Hoyas in his junior year of high school, he said that the connection he had with Assistant Coach Robert Burke played a large role in his decision to commit so early.

In the Big East, Villanova competes most directly with Georgetown for local recruits because of the two schools’ proximity.

“I have great respect for John, and if they’re recruiting a guy, I like that because I know what John likes,” Villanova Head Coach Jay Wright says.

“And I like what he likes. Sometimes with other schools, if they’re recruiting a guy, we might not want him. We say, `Oh, that coach is interested in him, hmm.’ But with Georgetown, we like it.”

Villanova’s Reynolds, Anderson and senior forward Dante Cunningham and Georgetown’s Chris Wright all seriously considered both schools.

The two schools have similar Big East histories and reputations for success, and head coaches known for recruiting level-headed players. As schools and as rival basketball teams, Georgetown and Villanova have become more alike.

“I think what’s happening, for whatever reason, is . the image of our programs is becoming similar, and I think that’s why all the guys we have from the Maryland-Virginia area considered Georgetown and have great respect for Georgetown,” Wright says.

Wright credits Georgetown for helping him recruit better players, tipping his cap to the fact that Georgetown has had the upper hand in the conference the last few years.

As area recruits consider Villanova and the Hoyas, they see limited playing time at Georgetown because of the high-caliber players already there, Wright says.

By cultivating a strong presence in the area and brining together smart, top-talent local recruits, Thompson has created a core of locals who know each other before enrolling, have played with and against each other and have a common frame of reference for their past.

“It’s fun because we all know each other. It’s not like we’re new to each other,” Summers says on seeing familiar faces from the start.

“You get a one-up on most guys coming into college. They need to figure out where they’re from. We already know where we’re from and how we feel about the school and why we’re here. We went through the process together; we were there together.”

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