People like to say you, "Choose your own friends."

But for Ohio State junior guard Caity Matter and Penn State junior guard Tanisha Wright, friendship wasn't a choice. It happened too naturally to be a choice.

Wright and Matter had competed against each other in the Big Ten for two seasons, but at that time, they were only acquaintances. They had never really spoken to each other the way friends do.

That changed last summer when the two All-Big Ten performers became teammates on the USA Young Women's Basketball. The two gravitated to one another and became the closest friends on the squad.

"It's one of those things: You meet a person, and you just connect," Matter said. "And that's how it was with Tanisha."

They only spent a month and a half together over the summer and already they felt like best friends. But tragedy has a way of testing just how strong friendships are, and so it would for these two. Matter and Wright would find out just how connected they were months later when Matter's brother, Ricky, was killed in a car accident.

The two didn't know that then, but knew they had formed a bond they didn't want to be broken. They knew next time they saw each other would be as opponents when the Lady Lions traveled to Columbus, Ohio on Jan. 25, but they also knew that, until then, they would stay in contact.

"We've always talked on the phone or on the computer, just to say, 'Hi how was your day,' " Matter said. "I didn't have any doubts that we would keep in touch."

Matter had no idea then how lucky she was that they did.

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The Buckeye's star, focused and ready for a crucial conference match up with then-No. 15 Michigan State, was on the Ohio State bus somewhere between Columbus and East Lansing, Mich. -- probably about 80 or 100 miles from her hometown of Bluffton, Ohio -- when her cell phone rang.

The news came like a shockwave: Her 15-year-old brother, Ricky, was dead, killed instantly when he and two of his schoolmates were broadsided by a SUV while driving at 2:50 p.m. on Feb. 14. Ricky's friend Tyler Kindred, the driver, failed to see a stop sign at the intersection about three miles outside of Bluffton.

Suddenly, basketball was the furthest thing from the mind of the Buckeye's consummate leader. Something had came into her life and swept away everything she thought was important only a few of minutes ago.

Fortunately, her teammates -- her friends -- were there to support her. And later that night, those same friends, who knew the importance of another friend of Matter's, called Wright to tell her what had happened.

Wright called Matter that night. Hearing her friend in so much pain was difficult for Wright to handle, and, distraught, she called her coach, Rene Portland. Wright was so upset "I didn't even recognize her voice," Portland would say later.

It was the first of many days Wright would ache for her friend.

Meanwhile, after receiving all the phone calls and sympathy, there came the decision for Matter: Would she play the next day against Michigan State?

Like many sad stories, this one would have a triumph as well. Even though home with her family was probably the only place she wanted to be, she decided she would play in the game and told her team she was competing in Ricky's honor.

Matter, knowing the competitive spirit she and Wright share, sent a text message to tell Wright she would play against Michigan State. Wright saw the message just in time before Penn State's game with Michigan.

Heavy-hearted, Matter stepped onto the court in East Lansing and had one of her best games of the season. She scored 24 points, capping a 51-point week to earn Big Ten Player of the Week honors.

But when the senior captain walked off the floor in the Breslin Center, she was returning to the reality that her family now had one less member.

Wright considered driving out to Bluffton for Ricky's funeral, but her academic and practice schedule leading up to the stretch run of the Big Ten regular season didn't leave time for a six-and-a-half-hour drive to the southwest corner of Ohio.

While Wright has not been able to offer Matter her presence in this time of need, she has been able to offer her words and her ears. The two have spent many nights on the phone since that weekend.

"I know she is always there for me. I know I can talk to her about anything. Some days I just need someone to listen, and she can just listen," Matter said.

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At 8:31 on a Tuesday night -- 16 days after she received the phone call that changed her life -- Matter is on her cell phone again. This time with a reporter.

As she talks, she is sitting in her car. But her car is parked; she is not driving as she speaks on her cell phone. It is only an assumption, but perhaps this is because she is now more cognizant of safe driving than most.

On this day, she has been named second team All-Big Ten by the coaches and media, but honors of this sort are inconsequential to her.

"At this point in my life, awards aren't that important," she says.

Still, Matter does not sound particularly down or hurried to get the conversation over with. She says she has plenty of time to talk and seems to be in good spirits.

Matter mentions her brother briefly a few times; never wanting to talk at length about the tragedy that beset her family.

She's trying to cope, though. She seems to want to poke herself only lightly with the pain as if talking about it were an acupuncture needle she knows will help her heal.

But she's always sure to be brief, so that the needle of the pain doesn't stab too deeply. That would hurt too much, and she isn't ready for that.

Matter is still surprisingly open, but if a subject is too invasive, she will reject it flat out, saying "I don't like to talk about that."

Those surrounding the Ohio State team can give some sense of how devastating Ricky's death was for the Matter family.

"I don't think I can exaggerate how close her family is," says Jim Massie, who covers the women's basketball beat for the Columbus Dispatch.

Following in Caity's footsteps at Bluffton High, Ricky, too, was becoming quite an athlete. As a freshman, Ricky was the starting quarterback for Bluffton and threw for over 3,000 yards in the fall, breaking several school records. This commonality of sports brought the entire family -- and particularly Caity and Ricky -- closer together.

"It's been described as Caity was Ricky's hero, and Ricky was Caity's best friend," Massie says.

Matter concludes the interview by saying "If you see T ... tell her I said, 'Hi.' "

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For the first time in more than two months, Matter will get to see Wright for herself this weekend at the Big Ten Tournament in Indianapolis.

And the two are competitors. Perhaps two of the fiercest in the Big Ten conference.

"I am a competitor and T is a competitor. She might be the most competitive person I know," Matter said.

The two are also friends. Perhaps the best friends of any two opponents in the entire league.

But with the possibility of Penn State and Ohio State playing each other in the Big Ten tournament certainly existing, their feelings toward each other will, somehow, have to be set aside.

Athletes often do this, though. They try to brush it all away and use the old sport's cliché -- "Off the court, we're friends, between the lines, we're both trying to win." But for these two, whose love for each other has led to a shared sense of loss, friendship may not be so easily brushed aside, the cliché perhaps not as easily utilized.

And if a game between Ohio State and Penn State were to occur, there will be time, after the game, for hugs and handshakes between Wright and Matter -- no matter what the outcome. The two will find each other somewhere on the court, embrace and know that they are divided only by the colors on their jerseys, and the time and distance they have been forced to spend apart. Nothing can truly separate them.

Matter understands this and takes solace in it. "I'm going to have my highs and my lows, my good days and my bad," Matter said. "But I know she's going to be there for all of them, helping me with all of them."