Interesting article in the NY Times on Wes Johnson. Some highlights:
1. Boehiem stays away from transfers - feels they are usually "underachievers". Intersting in light of our recent situation.
2. MU gets a mention as a school who might have pursued Johnson. He's also from Texas, so I wonder if Buzz had him on his radar at some point.
Transfer Wes Johnson Finds Paradise at Syracuse
By PETE THAMEL
SYRACUSE — There is a simple reason Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim has taken just five transfers in his 34 seasons as head coach.
“Usually,” Boeheim said, “transfers aren’t happy.”
In the college basketball world, a transfer is usually a euphemism for an underachiever. Players who bounce from school to school carry a bigger stigma with each stop.
But after three high schools, a six-month stretch playing pickup games at a junior college and affiliations with three other colleges, the Syracuse junior forward Wes Johnson has proved to be an outlier. His halogen smile shows his happiness, and his production for a Syracuse team that has gone from being unranked to a Final Four front-runner makes him an overachiever.
Johnson, who is averaging 17.3 points a game, leads No. 5 Syracuse (19-1) into a tussle with its archrival, No. 12 Georgetown (15-3), on Monday. Things have gone so well for Johnson that Boeheim said he expected him to leave for the N.B.A. after one year, another improbable destination after his rocky road through the basketball underworld.
“It definitely is corrupt,” Johnson said. He added: “I didn’t realize what a crazy business it is. That’s how it is. It’s always been like that. I’m just glad I ended up on the right. I definitely found paradise.”
Johnson grew up in Corsicana, Tex., a town of nearly 25,000 people where his mother packed Tom’s potato chips at a factory and his father conducted trains for Southwest Pacific.
Johnson’s high school coach, Andy Dotson, said that Johnson grew so fast — from a 5-foot-10 junior varsity point guard to a sinewy 6-foot-6 wing — that he could not put on enough weight for colleges to be interested.
Johnson also missed key summer events because of the pain that accompanied his growth spurt, according to his summer coach, Tony Johnson. Wes Johnson did not touch the ball that often because his summer teammates included Michael Crabtree, now a receiver with the San Francisco 49ers; Austin Jackson, a former top prospect for the Yankees; and Sean Williams, a first-round draft pick by the Nets in 2007.
Still, Tony Johnson, who is not related to Wes, and Dotson, a former college coach, lobbied on Johnson’s behalf.
“Just because I became a high school coach,” Dotson told his college coaching buddies, “I didn’t become an idiot.”
One of the few colleges that showed interest was Louisiana-Monroe, where Johnson was going until a coaching change solidified his hunch that he could do better. Johnson had completed his core requirements and needed to improve his standardized test scores, so he went to the Patterson School in North Carolina, a place that had had its credentials reviewed by the N.C.A.A. in the past for possible academic irregularities.
After two months there, Johnson decided to leave because he said Patterson’s coaches were giving him recruiting mail only from San Diego State. When Johnson complained, he was demoted to third string, his stepbrother, Craig Carroll, said. Johnson said he assumed that the Patterson coaches had struck a deal to send him to San Diego State and did not want him to get mail from colleges like Marquette and Michigan State.
“Once we realized they were trying to short-hand him, me and my wife got in the car, drove to North Carolina from Detroit in the middle of the night, packed him up in 30 minutes and drove straight back,” Carroll, 40, said.
Patterson’s coach at the time, Chris Chaney, said he asked Johnson to visit San Diego State only because the college had placed Johnson at Patterson. He laughed at the notion of demoting Johnson, saying his team had so much talent that Jordan Hill, a future lottery pick of the Knicks, did not even play in a game early that season.
Johnson then went to Eldon Academy in Petoskey, Mich., which often took players who needed to improve their college entrance exam scores.
“There’s no school building,” he said. “Basically, it’s an A.A.U. team.”
Johnson slept in a bed so small his knees hung over the edge and said he never had a full conversation with Gerald E. Ernst Jr., the proprietor of the school and its coach.
After two months, the school suddenly closed.
“One day he walked in the gym and yelled out, ‘It’s over,’ ” Johnson said of Ernst. “I was like, ‘It’s over?’ He was like, ‘Get your stuff and leave. It’s over.’ ”
Johnson went to live with his brother in the Detroit suburbs, took a Princeton Review class to improve his scores on his college entrance exams and played pickup basketball at a local junior college.
Johnson eventually committed to Iowa State and made the all-Big 12 rookie team as a freshman. But he played most of his sophomore season with a fracture in his foot that the team doctors never detected.
Although he averaged 12.4 points a game, Johnson clashed with Coach Greg McDermott. Carroll said Johnson’s foot was so swollen he could not put his shoe on, but he felt pressure to play.
“There was so much blood and tissue covering up the stress fracture that it wasn’t detected,” the Syracuse assistant Rob Murphy said. “The coach thought he was soft, but he was really hurt.”
When Johnson decided to transfer, Murphy recruited Johnson despite Boeheim’s history of rarely taking transfers. After Murphy mentioned Johnson, Boeheim ran into McDermott at a Coaches vs. Cancer charity event.
McDermott raved about Johnson’s character, which led to Boeheim’s telling Murphy to bring Johnson in for a visit. Johnson committed to Syracuse without taking planned trips to Pittsburgh, Ohio State and West Virginia.
Johnson joined LeRon Ellis (Kentucky), Ryan Blackwell (Illinois), Ethan Cole (New Hampshire) and Leo Rautins (Minnesota), the father of the current Orange starter Andy Rautins, as the only four-year transfers Boeheim has taken.
Boeheim says the only issue he has had with Johnson is that he is too unselfish.
“He doesn’t have a scoring mentality,” Boeheim said. “He’s taking like 11 shots a game.”
Murphy noted that after a recent win over Rutgers in which Johnson scored 11 points, he was smiling in the locker room as if he had scored 30. But with a smooth jumper, a 43-inch vertical leap and a knack for snaring rebounds, Johnson’s talent is undeniable.
“He’s going to get drafted so high, it’s hard to say no to that because he’s so talented,” Boeheim said of Johnson’s N.B.A. prospects. “He’s as good as any player in the country.”
And Syracuse appears to be as good as any team, something few expected after Jonny Flynn, Eric Devendorf and Paul Harris left early for professional basketball after last season. Johnson, whose lanky frame is a perfect fit for the Orange’s 2-3 zone, has sparked a decisive defensive improvement.
His unselfishness has also become the ethos of this team. Syracuse is No. 2 in Division I in assists despite the lack of an experienced point guard.
Perhaps most important for Johnson, he is having fun. He said the rigid offense at Iowa State, with more than 100 set plays, made him think too much on the court. He said Syracuse ran about 10 plays. Johnson gushes about what the freedom Boeheim has given him has done for his game.
“Players really respond to that, just letting players play,” Johnson said.
And through all the rough stops along the way, Johnson kept his big smile, as if bracing for his happy ending.
“If I could do it all over again, I’d do it the same way,” he said. “I honestly would.”
