University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Anger Management
January 25, 2015 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
By Adam Lucas
We've all seen this before from Brice Johnson.
The junior ripped down a rebound with 13:51 left, his tenth of the game on a day when Carolina needed every one of them to win the rebounding battle, 36-35.
That's the good Brice.
But then Johnson had to box out Jarquez Smith, who tried to go over Johnson's back to secure the offensive board. He successfully pivoted away from Smith, but then Boris Bojanovsky reached around Johnson and tried to tie him up, to which Johnson immediately took offense. This is when the bad Brice sometimes appears, the one who has been known to let his emotions take him out of a game for minutes at a time.
Johnson ripped the ball away from Bojanovsky, who was whistled for a foul, and after the whistle Johnson roared.
“I said, 'Get away from me,'” Johnson said with only a slight smile. “Well, I'm not going to say exactly what I said.”
Probably a good idea. But the point remains the same, which is that here was Johnson right on the edge of his emotions being a problem. This is a familiar scenario for him, because he's been there often during his Tar Heel career. But rarely has he handled it as maturely as he did on Saturday.
At the point when Bojanovsky fouled him, he had nine points and ten rebounds—a solid game. But over the next 13 minutes, he piled up eight points and four more rebounds on the way to finishing with 18 and 14, a terrific game. It's his third double-double in the last five games, and he's shooting 67 percent from the floor over his last four games.
Johnson's 49 points and 31 rebounds over the last three games are the second-most points he's ever scored in a three-game stretch as a Tar Heel, and the most rebounds he's grabbed in a three-game span.
The knock on Johnson is that he thrives when things are good, but sometimes struggles when faced with adversity. Against the 'Noles, he played against a team that is annually known for physical defense, encountered some struggles, and played straight through it.
The difference is in how he reacts when he recognizes that he's on the edge.
“It's how I motivate myself,” Johnson said. “I amp myself up to get more rebounds or get a nice dunk or something…I try and grab rebounds. Or I set a good screen where I can knock somebody down or something.”
OK, so maybe setting a vicious screen isn't the healthiest way to get out your aggression, but it's significantly better than committing a silly reach-in foul or failing to run back on defense, both of which are offenses of which Johnson has sometimes been guilty.
This time, all Johnson did was score Carolina's next seven points after Florida State closed within 58-52, a stretch he started on a three-point play with 7:44 remaining, absorbing some contact from the red-hot Xavier Rathan-Mayes and still scoring the bucket off the glass.
As he scored, Johnson could hear the voices of Williams and Hubert Davis, the same ones he hears in practice every day and, on many occasions, even in games.
Williams: “Go up strong! Go through the contact!”
Davis has a little more colorful way of putting it: “Go through their noses!”
That's what Johnson did on multiple occasions on his way to 18 and 14, adding an offensive rebound put-back and a vicious follow slam off a Justin Jackson miss to his streak of seven straight. And he did it all in a game in which he not only responded well to some physical adversity, but also played through some foul trouble. He picked up three fouls in the first 14:25, but then played the rest of the game—including 14 key second-half minutes—without being whistled again.
And remember, this was a game in which he was experiencing some back pain, an issue that arose when he stood up awkwardly while watching the Carolina junior varsity game (yes, the Tar Heels are now so snakebitten that they suffer injuries during the JV contest). When Johnson was on the bench, he spent most of his time standing behind the bench in an effort to prevent his back from tightening while he sat.
The way he handled that discomfort is another window into his maturity. Roy Williams often brags on the way Tyler Hansbrough knew his body, on the way Hansbrough did everything possible to give himself every possible opportunity to play well, from the way he ate to the way he was stretched before the game.
That's what Johnson did on Saturday, as he sought out trainer Doug Halverson and strength and conditioning coach Jonas Sahratian before his usual pregame stretching session.
“I knew I needed a little bit more today,” Johnson said. “I went into the training room and told them I needed a little more stretching, and they did a great job.”
The player who once walked right on the line of being a hothead is growing up, and his productivity shows it. But the Tar Heels don't want him to totally bury the emotion that has become an occasional Carolina catalyst.
“Sometimes he's in another world,” said Jackson. “But when he gets mad, that means something is going on, and we feed off that energy. The way he's been playing lately, he can stay as mad as he wants.”
