January 28, 2026
At Iowa, Chit-Chat Wright fits right in
By Angie Holmes
Barrett: 'She's like a quiet, cute assassin'
Iowa assistant coach LaSondra Barrett knew early on that the little girl tearing up the court in the Atlanta area would eventually become a big star.
Continue reading with a subscription to The Next
Get unlimited access to women’s basketball coverage and help support our hardworking staff of writers, editors, and photographers by subscribing today.
Already a member?
Login
Barrett, then an assistant at Georgia Tech, was not only drawn to Chazadi “Chit-Chat” Wright’s basketball skills, but also her passion for the game.
“I’ve known the entire family for quite awhile. We watched her since she was growing up, even younger, she would come up to our camps and power hours. She’s just growing up right before my eyes,” Barrett told The IX Basketball.
“I think my favorite game of hers in AAU was when she got a technical foul. She stood up to a 6’6 player and kind of had words exchanged,” Barrett added. “And I was like, ‘man, the littlest one on the court has probably the biggest heart.’ And I think just seeing that fight, super competitive … she’s like a quiet, cute assassin.”
Now, the 5’4” sophomore point guard is helping lead Iowa to its best Big Ten start since the 1995-96 season, when the Hawkeyes began conference play 12-0 under legendary coach C. Vivian Stringer. Going into Thursday’s game against USC, the Hawkeyes are 9-0 in the Big Ten and 18-2 overall, with their only losses to No. 1 undefeated UConn and in-state rival Iowa State.
Wright, who transferred to Iowa last spring from Georgia Tech, is an integral part of that success. Averaging 13.1 points and 3.9 assists per game, she has proven to be a steady force on the court. She leads the team in steals (1.6 per game), 3 point percentage (48%) and free-three percentage (90%).
She scored 8 points (six of them three throws) in Iowa’s 85-78 overtime win Jan. 22 at Maryland — a game that saw the Hawkeyes squander a 17-point lead in the final minutes of regulation. But rather than get flustered, Wright stayed composed even while the game collapsed.
“To be honest, I was just really calm. I wasn’t overreacting,” Wright told The IX Basketball. “Nothing really bothered me in that moment. I just knew that we had another five minutes to do what we do — play Iowa basketball — and I mean, that’s what we did.”
Her transition at the team’s top point guard has been made smoother by Iowa’s powerful post duo of senior Hannah Stuelke and sophomore Ava Heiden. Stuekle, who was named Jersey Mike’s Naismith Player of the Week on Monday, is averaging 14.3 points and 9 rebounds per game, while Heiden — considered to be one of the most improved players in the country this season — is averaging 16.4 points and 7.7 rebounds per game.
Listen now to The IX Sports Podcast and Women’s Sports Daily
We are excited to announce the launch of TWO new podcasts for all the women’s sports fans out there looking for a daily dose of women’s sports news and analysis. Stream on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or anywhere you listen to podcasts, and make sure to subscribe!
“They just open up the floor. They make the game easier for the guards to be able to get outside shots and create shots for ourselves, because they really have a lot of attention on them down in the post, so they just really made the game easier for us,” Wright said of the formidable frontcourt.
Barrett has seen Wright’s improvement in post passing.
“I think one of the adjustments early on was her ability to pass, her ability to develop her post passing, her post entry. I told Coach J that we played a five-out at Georgia Tech. We didn’t really have a true post player, and we definitely didn’t have a player like Hannah Stuelke or Ava Heiden,” Barrett said. “If you come to pre practice, her and Ava, or her and Hannah are constantly working pick-and-rolls and constantly working post pass. We started that early in the fall, just getting them adjusted — all of our guards, but specifically her — to be able to initiate our offense.”
The decision to transfer
Wright’s freshman season at Georgia Tech was respectable, as she started 12 games and averaged 7.2 points and 2.6 assists per game. But when head coach Nell Fortner retired at the end of the season, Georgia Tech’s staff and players began to reevaluate their futures.
“It was unexpected when Nell retired,” Barrett said. “I think we thought we would be in Atlanta, for sure Georgia Tech. And so once Nell retired, there was a waiting process of hiring a coach and trying to figure out what I was going to do as well.”
Meanwhile, Wright was also weighing her options.
“It was just a lot of different factors that went into it. I didn’t want to go, but once I had a talk with my family and just a lot of different mentors and my mom and dad and grandma and aunt and basically my whole family, we just decided that it was best for me to get in the portal and weigh my options,” Wright said.
Barrett, a former All-American at LSU and first-round pick for the Washington Mystics in the 2012 WNBA draft, was announced as an Iowa assistant coach in April 2025. Once Wright hit the transfer portal, Barrett contacted the player she had been watching since she was a little girl.
“I ended up getting the job at Iowa, and then ended up having a conversation with them after she got in the portal. So I don’t think it was a done deal how people think it was,” Barrett said. “It was a conversation after the fact, where she told me they just wanted to go ahead and get in the portal. Then we were able to talk.”
Wright recalls the conversation she had with Barrett after entering the portal.
“After she was already a coach here, and she was able to talk to me, she did reach out, and then she was just saying, ‘just give it a look. No rush. Just take your time,’” Wright said. “So once I did come on my visit, I felt really good with my teammates, and then I knew that I would have somebody here that I had already known, and I just felt like it was the place for me to be.”
While Barrett agrees that her presence helped with Wright’s decision, she points out the influence of Iowa head coach Jan Jensen and the program’s culture.
“I think what people are missing is on the visit, Jan’s one-on-ones with Chit Chat. She was really able to make the connection there. I remember her visit, she left with the girls and went out and got frozen yogurt. And we all thought, ‘she looks real comfortable here’” Barrett said. “She had other visits lined up. She had other schools also reaching out and calling her, but hats off to Coach Jan for really taking her under her wing. Even though I was a big part with her trusting me, I think Coach Jan deserves a lot of credit as well.”
Wright agrees that she and Jensen were on the same wavelength from the beginning.
“My conversations with Coach Jan were always great, and I just really wanted to do whatever it takes to win, whether that was just being a role player or having to score points, or just playing my role, or doing whatever it takes to win,” Wright said.
A seamless fit
Barrett always knew Wright would be a good fit in Iowa’s system.
“She can play in any system. She’s a pass-first. And I think Iowa is a program of team and culture, and she fits in terms of that,” Barrett said. “I think the biggest thing we talked about was the press in past years, especially last year. Jan said, ‘we keep getting pressed, everybody’s pressing us.’ And I said, ‘she can be, at times, a one-woman press break.’
“I think the only thing people could gripe about is just her size, because of how big Caitlin (Clark) was and Lucy (Olsen) was,” she added. “But when you watch her play, she makes up for it so much. Her ability to just run the team, be able to get our bigs the ball, be able to distribute to the wings, and also her ability to also take over and score herself.”
Jensen is pleased with the way Wright is living up to her potential.
“You see it but they have to come here and have to adjust and they have to be open and kind of learn the new system. So you never know how quickly a portal kid or a freshman is going to adapt. I think that’s this new model that we’re in,” Jensen told reporters in a Jan. 14 press conference. “Everybody thinks it’s going to be instantaneous and sometimes the trajectory just takes a little bit longer for some than others. And if we stay the course, it can be really great consistently their whole careers.”
“With Chit-Chat that’s what we were hoping, but you don’t really know until you get to see them and work with them,” Jensen added. “That’s what’s been a real pleasant surprise. She’s just really as fast as I thought, she’s as shifty as I thought. But when we get her confidence and just understanding everything, I think she’s going to be a really consistent, lethal threat.”
The IX Soccer is here!
In case you missed it, The IX Sports introduced a new women’s soccer-specific vertical called The IX Soccer!
Just like The IX Basketball, this will be your destination for 24/7 women’s soccer coverage, including exclusive interviews, behind-the-scenes looks at your favorite teams and leagues, as well as news from around the world.
Follow the link below and bookmark the page to stay up to date on the latest headlines in women’s soccer.
Iowa fifth-year guard Kylie Feuerbach agrees that Wright has jelled with the team.
“I guess when there’s transfers, you maybe look at a few clips, but you don’t know much about them,” Feuerbach told reporters Jan. 14. “Once they come in the summer, we do a lot of scrimmaging and stuff so you kind of get a sneak peak on how they’re going to be playing. So I kind of already knew she was going to be a hooper. She’s a phenomenal player and it’s so fun to play with her.”
Home away from home
Until moving to Iowa, Wright had not lived beyond the Atlanta metro area. She grew up in Decatur, Ga., with her grandmother, Pamela Tucker, who remains a large part of her life.
“I was raised by my grandmother. I still had a great relationship with my mom, a great relationship with my dad. I just really love being with my grandmother. So that was just a choice I made,” she said. “She’s always been there for me. She always shows me the way and spreads wisdom that she has to me. She was just all in one. She was a mom and dad all in one, while I still also had my real mom and dad.”
Her father, Chaz Wright, an athletic trainer from Decatur, Ga., has always been involved in his daughter’s development as an athlete. He was also instrumental in her decision to transfer to Iowa.
“It’s her first time moving away. But we did our research on the Iowa program. We knew it was a great program with Coach Jan, a great fan base. We saw the Caitlin days here. So, we knew we were coming to a great fan base. We wanted to be a part of it,” Chaz Wright told The IX Basketball after Iowa’s 91-70 victory over Ohio State on Sunday in Iowa City.
While he still maintains his residence in Georgia, he moved to Iowa City in August to be closer to Chit-Chat.
“I had to watch my daughter. She’s a sophomore, and I’m used to going to all the games. I just had to be there for her,” he said.
The experience has exceeded his expectations.
“It has blown us away. People come up in the community to talk to us while we’re at the games here, out at the grocery store, they have a Chit-Chat shirt on,” he said. “They just show a lot of love. It’s great. We love it.”
Having her dad around and her family at games has helped Wright with her new surroundings.
“It’s great to have a family member with me. It just brings some comfortability, just knowing that I have my dad here with me,” she said. “And, of course, my family travels a lot with me too, or travels here to see me a lot and come to my games.”
A host of family members, including her grandmother, mother, aunts, uncles and cousins, attend as many games as possible.
“You’ll see a lot of her family at the games. They travel back and forth. Sometimes they fly up here to Chicago and then drive to Iowa City. Sometimes they make that 12-hour drive from Atlanta,” Barrett said. “She has a very good community and a very good support group in her family.”
Iowa’s fanbase also serves as a support system for the team. The 15,000-seat Carver-Hawkeye Arena is sold out for the women’s basketball season for the third straight year — a fact that doesn’t go unnoticed among recruits and their families.
“I love the fan base. It’s like no other,” Wright said. “If you go to any other school, there’s not a lot of supporters, a lot of fans that interact with the social media side, and also just show up to the games and really just cheer us on and encourage us.”
“It’s just a wow moment. Every time I run out, it’s just like the first time,” she added. “I feel like you can never really just get used to it. It has a different feeling every time.”
Want even more women’s sports in your inbox?
Subscribe now to The IX Sports and receive our daily women’s sports newsletter covering soccer, tennis, basketball, golf, hockey and gymnastics from our incredible team of writers. That includes Basketball Wednesday from founder and editor Howard Megdal.
Readers of The IX Basketball now save 50% on their subscription to The IX.
Barrett agrees that the Carver crowd is not like anything she has experienced.
“Every game is fun. I’m still kind of shocked every time I walk out on how loud it is. I don’t know if I’ve gotten used to it yet” Barrett said. “I remember our exhibition game. I think she looked back up at me and we were just in awe. And they were like, ‘this is nothing; wait till we get to the Big Ten.’ And we were just smiling ear to ear at the exhibition.”
Another thing that makes them smile is seeing so many fans wearing t-shirts with catchy sayings like “Shoot That Chit” and “Chit Just Got Real.”
“I never would have thought I would be in this position of people wearing my shirt and my name is really being out there,” she said. “And so when I see those shirts, I don’t know, it just brings something over me, where it’s just like, I can’t explain it. It’s an unexplainable feeling.”
Wright has come a long way since a set of twins on her AAU team started calling her “Chit-Chat,” at age 10, because she didn’t talk much.
After she made a three-pointer, forcing an Ohio State timeout last Sunday, she hyped up the crowd by raising her arms.
“It was actually a dare from my massage therapist. She dared me to pump up the crowd and get the crowd going,” she said of the moment.
Another moment that sent the Carver crowd nuclear was a half-court shot Wright sunk as the first quarter ended against Michigan State on Jan. 18.
“Once it came off my fingertips, I could just see the trajectory of the ball, and it just looked like it was going in. So I took a couple steps back, and I just saw it going in,” she said. “It was just really fun how the crowd reacted and how my coaches and teammates reacted as well.”
Of course, that shot drew comparisons to former Iowa guard Clark, who was known to sink shots from ridiculous distances. But, while Wright is honored to be placed in such company, she is forging her own path.
“I’m me, she is her. I will never be her. She will never be me,” she said. “A lot of people try to compare us. It’s cool and all, but I just like to be my own person.”
Wright relies on her faith to keep her grounded as her star rises.
“A Bible verse I go by is John 13:7: ‘you don’t understand now, but later you will.’ You could just look at all the bad things that’s happening, but then later on, you’ll be like, ‘Wow. I understand it now,’” she said. “When I was younger, having to go to all these camps and meet all these different people. I was very introverted, having to make those connections with other people. I understand it now.”
Barrett is very proud of the girl she watched grow up.
“She came from really humble beginnings. I think what people don’t see is the work she’s put in, where she had to be beyond good, just because of her size, and how she grew up, and I think that’s what makes her special,” she said. “So to see her get all that, and still more to come, and so much more. I’m excited to see her journey, just because I know where she came from.
“I think the fan base has been just tremendous, not only embracing her, but just making her feel like she’s probably been here for more than just a couple months,” Barrett added. “To know that you still have the rest of this season and two more years with her. I think that our fans should be pretty happy about that.”
“Becoming Caitlin Clark” is out now!
Howard Megdal’s newest book is here! “Becoming Caitlin Clark: The Unknown Origin Story of a Modern Basketball Superstar” captures both the historic nature of Clark’s rise and the critical context over the previous century that helped make it possible, including interviews with Clark, Lisa Bluder (who also wrote the foreword), C. Vivian Stringer, Jan Jensen, Molly Kazmer and many others.
Written by Angie Holmes
Based in the Midwest, Angie Holmes covers the Big Ten, Big 12 and the Missouri Valley Conference (MVC) for The IX Basketball.
