University of North Carolina Athletics
Senior Appreciation: Will Johnson
March 7, 2003 | Men's Basketball
March 7, 2003
TarHeelBlue.com takes a look at Carolina's two basketball seniors who will play their final home game on Sunday. Yesterday, we profiled point guard Jonathan Holmes.
By Adam Lucas
Will Johnson is used to making decisions that pay off positively in the future.
So it's really no surprise that he'll parlay a smart move last spring into travel abroad this fall, and possibly even a lucrative career.
Johnson is a Morehead Scholar, the most prestigious academic award on the Carolina campus. Recipients of that award participate in a bevy of summer enrichment programs designed to foster leadership and provide real-world life experience. The summer before a student's senior year is devoted to travel, with some encounters including trips to Iceland or South Africa.
Johnson, a senior from Hickory, decided his travel could wait. Instead, he chose to remain in Chapel Hill throughout the summer of 2002. By day, he worked at the various basketball camps that passed through the Smith Center and assisted in the athletics ticket office. By night, he was a one-man basketball league organizer, responsible for arranging the nightly pickup games between current Tar Heels, the incoming freshmen, and alums like Shammond Williams, Antawn Jamison, and Ed Cota who wanted to get some practice at their alma mater.
""I deferred [the travel program] because I wanted to be here and be with the team and have a chance to be in the gym," Johnson said at the time. "I definitely think it was the right decision."
It was the right decision then, and it's proving to be the right decision now. Because he deferred his travel abroad, he also deferred his travel stipend that is provided by the Morehead program. He plans to use that money after graduation, when he'll travel to Europe and try to land tryouts in pro basketball leagues there. He even thinks the experience might lead to a book.
"There are a good number of leagues over there," Johnson says. "It's a matter of going over there and playing well. I'm not picky at all. I'd like to live in a different country and play basketball while I still enjoy playing basketball. If I have the opportunity, I want to do it. It's something I can't do when I'm 40, so I might as well do it now."
If you're thinking to yourself that Johnson's reasoning makes perfect sense, you're exactly right. That level-headedness has become his trademark, even eclipsing that shock of red hair that has caused opposing crowds all over the ACC and the nation to call him "Opie."
At first, it was creative. It stopped being original, oh, about five or six years ago. But it doesn't frustrate him, doesn't make him angry. Instead, he feeds off the armchair coaches who take one look at him and decide that surely this lanky six-foot-seven kid can't play.
"It's kind of a necessary evil, because it keeps me going," Johnson says. "It makes me angry, but I turn that anger into going out and working out. People have done that to me ever since I was in high school."
He's come a long way since high school, when he was an all-state soccer goalie in addition to being a standout basketball player. He's soaked every bit out of his experience in Chapel Hill, both in basketball and beyond. As a freshman he was part of a Final Four squad, playing in 24 games on Bill Guthridge's last team. Off the court, he interned in Manhattan during the summer before his junior season, and he's a repeat winner of the athletic director's Scholar-Athlete Award.
This season, his contributions have been in spot minutes, as he's averaging about seven minutes and two points per game.
His teammates and the coaching staff, however, recognize that Johnson has provided the voice of experience that is sorely needed on a team with nine freshmen and sophomores.
"When it is time for someone to speak up on the floor, Will is especially quick to get on a teammate," Matt Doherty says. "He called a team meeting after the Georgia Tech game and told the guys that we had a stretch run here and that we needed to make the most of it."
Point made: the Heels went out and played much better basketball after the meeting, including a stretch where they won three of four games.
Included in that streak was a 93-57 victory over North Carolina A&T, an overmatched opponent that might have been just a footnote to history if it hadn't been for one significant occurrence: Johnson's first dunk as a Tar Heel.
Reviews of the one-handed jam were mixed. Fellow senior Jonathan Holmes, a non-dunker himself, was suitably impressed. "We had talked about it," he said. "I told him that if he got the chance, he had to put one down. He said he might have to leak out and get a cherry pick. I was glad he got it. It was cool."
But what about Carolina's resident doctor of dunk, David Noel?
"He does it in practice," Noel said. "I knew he could do it. I was glad to see him get one in a game."
Noel, of course, is a man of many dunks, including a 360 in the same game that Johnson got his slam. Now, for the first time, the truth can be told: the freshman only learned how to jam from his more experienced teammate.
"I worked with David during the preseason on his dunks from the foul line and his 360's," he said with a smile. "I just wanted to show him how to do them."
He's kidding. But if he was serious, it would just be another example of Johnson's wise use of time with high future returns.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly, click here.
