Kris Johnson rebounds from back injury
Kris Johnson rebounds from back injury
UCLA guard works way to mountaintop despite setbacks
By Scott Yamaguchi
Daily Bruin Staff
INDIANAPOLIS -- There lay Kris Johnson, sprawled on the Pauley Pavilion floor with a strained back, having been injured in a scramble for a loose ball just five minutes into the first half of the regular season finale.
This was really no time for an injury to Johnson, who had finally come into his own as an NCAA basketball player, whose UCLA team was already missing its leading scorer and rebounder - J.R. Henderson - because of a strep throat infection, and who was expected to be a major force for the Bruins in the NCAA Tournament which, at the time, loomed just four days in the future.
In fact, the whole situation was a bit too ironic for Johnson, who had arrived in Westwood the previous year as one of the most highly-touted recruits in the nation, only to suffer a leg injury in the season opener.
That injury, a stress fracture of the left fibula, kept Johnson out of action for nearly a month, during which time fellow freshmen Henderson and Toby Bailey stepped into prime-time roles on the team, and Johnson's hope of having an impact went by the wayside.
"After that, my season kind of went downhill," Johnson recalled. "I sat out, I was discouraged, I was frustrated, I was in a state of depression, I didn't want to do anything and I was just real down on myself.
"I came from being the man, busting, dogging, getting all the publicity being Kris Johnson of Crenshaw, to being nothing. And when that happened, I kind of took it hard."
But this time around, there would be no month-long hiatus, nothing to take so hard.
Though Johnson did not return in the Washington State game - breaking his string of five consecutive double-figure scoring performances - or practice Monday and Tuesday, he has undergone treatment twice a day for the sore back.
Wednesday, he was listed as probable for the Bruins' first-round game against Princeton here at the RCA Dome tonight, and for that, UCLA head coach Jim Harrick was thankful.
"He'll be a good player against Princeton because he's very hard to guard inside," Harrick said. "He's playing at the top of his game, too.
"But when you get hurt, you get a little more cautious, so we'll see."
Johnson has been anything but cautious this season. Cocky, in fact, might be a better way to describe him, though the confidence is not at all unwarranted.
After enduring a rigorous diet and training program over the summer that lowered his weight from 265 to 220 pounds, Johnson served as the sixth man in UCLA's first five games, three of which were losses.
Then, when coaches decided to pull point guard Cameron Dollar from the starting lineup so that his injured hands would heal, Bailey moved over to the point, and Johnson moved into the starting lineup as the No. 2 guard.
He remained there for 18 games, during which time UCLA went 18-3, and during which time Johnson returned to the form that had helped him lead Crenshaw High School to a pair of Division I State Titles in his junior and senior seasons.
It became glaringly apparent in the Bruins' 93-73 pasting of California on Jan. 13 in Pauley Pavilion. Johnson was nearly unstoppable in that contest, scoring 25 points before half-time and finishing with 36 - the highest single-game scoring total of any UCLA player this season.
Though Johnson had started eight games before the showdown with Cal, he was probably the least heralded of the Bruin starters, and opponents tended to overlook him.
"When you prepare for UCLA, you don't prepare for Kris Johnson to score 36 points," Cal head coach Todd Bozeman said after his team's loss.
That all changed after Johnson's effort against the Golden Bears, but nobody seemed to be able to slow him down. In his next nine games as a starter, Johnson averaged 14.7 points per contest. On the season, he has scored in double-figures 20 times, and he is the only UCLA player to have scored more than 30 points, with two such performances.
The second, a 32-point outing, came in last week's 91-88 victory over Washington.
"We talked about Kris Johnson before the game," Husky head coach Bob Bender said. "We saw what he did to Cal, so we knew what he was capable of doing."
That Washington was unable to contain him is a testament to Johnson's uncanny ability to be in the right spot at the right time.
"I just have a nose for the ball," Johnson said. "There are some guys that, no matter where the ball bounces, it comes to them. I'm just one of those guys."
Said Harrick: "The game comes easy to Kris Johnson. But I'll tell you this: If you show up to watch a practice, Kris will be the hardest working guy there."
Even so, Johnson is still overlooked by opposing coaches. While teammates Charles O'Bannon, Bailey and Henderson were all named to the Pacific 10 All-Conference team, Johnson - who was the Bruins' leading scorer in league play - was left off.
But such recognition is not important to Johnson, nor was it a big deal to him when he was pulled back out of the starting lineup to allow room for a healthy Dollar.
"It was getting toward the tournament, and I felt it was a great move on the coaches' part," Johnson said. "I couldn't do anything about it, I just had to accept it and keep playing. I couldn't let that destroy or hurt the rest of my season.
"A lot of times, people let things like that mess up the rest of their season, like, 'OK, I'm not going to work hard in practice if I'm not starting.' That's only hurting yourself, and I realized that right away. I was like, 'I'm going to work harder in practice now.' I just want to be at the top of my game."Comments to webmaster@db.asucla.ucla.edu
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