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
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