Lucas: Mom's Messages

By Adam Lucas

Even Amy Johnson had to like that one.

Amy is also known as Cameron Johnson's mother. She played college basketball at Kent State, where she scored a healthy 1,018 points.

During Cameron's last season at Pittsburgh, the coaching staff actively discouraged him from going to the offensive glass. That didn't matter to Amy Johnson.

"My mom will attest to this," he said with a grin. "Last year, at halftime of almost every game, I would get a text from her, and it always said, 'Go to the offensive glass!'"

Pitt coaches, for some reason, discouraged their players from checking texts at halftime for advice from their mother. But no matter what her timing might have been, you have to say the exact same thing about her that you would say about most mothers, especially those who played college basketball: she was absolutely, positively right.

Johnson scored the first basket of the game on Tuesday night against Boston College on a dunk follow off an offensive rebound, and proceeded to get five more offensive boards. The six offensive rebounds against the Eagles were more than he had accumulated in the previous three Atlantic Coast Conference games combined.

"Rebounding is an effort thing," Johnson said. "It's a persistence thing. If you go in there thinking you will get the rebound, you have a better chance of getting the rebound. You have to do it if you want to play. And once you start doing it, you start figuring out that the ball might come off to this side, or if I get around my defender and go to that open spot, I can get the rebound there."

The irony is that Johnson, a well-known perimeter shooter, might have played his best offensive game for Carolina against Boston College while not making a single three-pointer. Johnson missed all three of his three-pointers, but he was 5-for-7 from two-point range.

It wasn't just the baskets he made. It was the way he played. Getting his first start as a Tar Heel, Johnson just looked more engaged with the flow of the game. Roy Williams had threatened his team that if they wanted to play with the small lineup, they had to rebound. Carolina held a whopping 16-2 rebounding advantage in the first six minutes of the game, bolstered largely by Johnson's six early boards and Luke Maye's ferocious performance.


Perhaps this was a result that had been building, but we missed it because of the disappointing outcomes. Johnson did have six assists and a team-high eight rebounds at Florida State, but most of the attention went to Joel Berry's strong outing.

Johnson had five more assists on Tuesday night, a couple of the spectacular variety—the highlight was a bounce pass to Garrison Brooks for a dunk—and also had a couple more assists "the way we keep them," as Dean Smith would've said, when he threw the ball inside and the recipient was fouled.

When Boston College tried to go zone with six minutes left in the first half, it was Johnson who noticed it first and called it out to his teammates. A minute later, he had a great sequence when he loudly called for the ball at the top of the key…but he didn't want the ball to shoot it, he wanted it so he could swing it to Kenny Williams for a wide open three-pointer. When Williams missed, it was Johnson who poked the ball away from the Eagles to record the steal.

Because of his incredible performance at the Smith Center last year, when he made six of nine three-pointers, we tend to think of Johnson as solely a spot-up shooter. Tuesday night was a nice reminder that there's much more in there.

The very perceptive Johnson had an interesting take when asked what he adds to the mix. "I want to help the team function at its highest possible level when I'm on the court," he said. "Whatever that means, whether it's rebounding, playing defense, or scoring, that's what I want to do."

Isn't that the ultimate goal, the one Roy Williams preaches from the very first practice? Not score the most points. Not make the most baskets. But if the team functions at its highest possible level when you're on the court, that's your peak performance. Remember, Johnson has plenty of basketball experience, but it's still his first few months in the Carolina program. Think of how many freshmen struggle to comprehend that one single truth. Here sits Johnson, who has played six career games for Carolina, and he's got it.

And when Johnson is driving to the basket—during the second half, he immediately recognized he was being guarded by the 6-foot-1 Ky Bowman on a switch and drove to the rim, sinking the shot and drawing the foul—the Tar Heel offense is much more efficient.

And yet, as good as he was, Johnson knows that wasn't his best game.

"The rebounds and the points were a matter of me giving my best effort, not necessarily playing my best game," he said as he perused a box score. "I didn't shoot the ball from the outside particularly well. It wasn't my best performance, but it was just a result of effort."

That's the kind of insight you'd expect from a graduate student who was a Dean's List student at Pitt while graduating in three years. Some players look at the box score and let that determine their feelings about the game. Johnson knew he wasn't particularly hot on Tuesday…but he also realized his effort completely camouflaged a couple errant shots.

That effort meant Johnson left the Smith Center with his first Tar Heel double-double. He also, of course, had an important text message to send to his mom.

"See," he said he was planning to write, "I told you I can rebound."

Players Mentioned

Garrison Brooks

Cameron Johnson

Luke Maye

Kenny Williams

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