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Background: Johnson didn’t play organized ball until 9th grade, and it showed. He often found himself wandering the court not really knowing where he should be. His first two years of high school ball were nothing more than developmental practice on his school’s junior varsity team.
Johnson had height and athleticism, but lacked fundamentals. By the time Johnson entered his junior year coaches decided to move him up to varsity due to vast improvements during the summer when he impressed many major Division I schools. Among those schools, Purdue, Indiana and Xavier all took the initiative to engage the rising junior early on. Johnson’s hard work paid off, and Purdue locked the four star top 100 recruit, thanks to his comfort level with players and coaches. His senior year at Franklin Central proved to be fruitful after he averaged 20.6 points, 9.1 rebounds and 4.3 blocks per game. Since his arrival at Purdue, the school has made it to three consecutive NCAA tournaments including back to back Sweet 16 appearances.
As in his high school career, Johnson has steadily improved his level of play, the culmination of this being last season, where he earned All-Big Ten Second and All-Defensive team honors. Johnson declared for the NBA draft in order to properly gauge his value among teams, but lucky for Purdue, Johnson withdrew after determining that his stock wasn’t high enough. He will likely leave Purdue as one of the school’s all time leaders in blocked shots. To date, Johnson is currently in second place with 184 to Joe Barry Carroll’s 349.
Statistics | |||||||||||||||||
SEASONS |
GP |
FG% |
3PT% |
FT% |
SPG |
BPG |
RPG |
APG |
PPG |
||||||||
2007-08 Purdue |
34 |
42.1 |
00.0 |
64.9 |
0.4 |
1.0 |
3.1 |
0.3 |
5.4 |
||||||||
2008-09 Purdue |
37 |
54.0 |
00.0 |
73.6 |
0.5 |
2.1 |
5.6 |
0.7 |
13.4 |
||||||||
2009-10 Purdue |
35 |
50.7 |
00.0 |
71.8 |
0.9 |
2.1 |
7.1 |
0.7 |
15.5 |
||||||||
2010-11 Purdue |
34 |
49.4 |
29.4 |
80.9 |
0.9 |
2.3 |
8.6 |
1.0 |
20.5 |
||||||||
DIV I Totals |
140 |
49.2 |
07.1 |
72.8 |
0.7 |
1.9 |
6.1 |
0.7 |
13.7 |