Brice Johnson bulks up to take on starter’s role

Temptation has gotten the best of Brice Johnson in recent months.

He might as well be a freshman, eyes wide at the all-you-can-eat buffets of college dining halls and endless desserts piled into self-service drawer stations.

Only during Johnson’s freshman year, he had no interest in picking up the ‘Freshman 15.’

Since then, North Carolina men’s basketball coach Roy Williams has challenged Johnson to bulk up his lanky, 6-foot-9 frame.

So now, the junior forward jumps at every chance he gets to eat a little extra.

He’s 40 pounds heavier than his freshman self: 228 pounds and counting.

“I’m eating a lot more than I would have my freshman year,” Johnson said. “Freshman year, I ate a lot but I didn’t eat as much as I do now. I can’t stop eating for some reason. Sometimes I just catch myself eating a cream pie or something.

“It’s a problem I have now. Every time I see something I have to eat it. I’m really on a ‘see food’ diet for real now.”

Johnson arrived to Chapel Hill in 2012 weighing 187 pounds. As a freshman, his smaller size dictated his style of play: a lot of quick shots. Any time Johnson got some space, he fired. And if he got a little more, he finished the play off with his trademark tomahawk dunk, accented with a powerful yell and pound of his chest.

“Our freshman year, he was kind of our energy guy who’d come off the bench, get a dunk and scream or flex his muscles,” junior point guard Marcus Paige said. “Or flex whatever he had.”

In high school, the muscles worked. Johnson established a reputation of being a banger inside. As a senior at Edisto High School in his home state of South Carolina, he averaged 25.4 points, 14.3 rebounds and 8.3 blocks a game.

Yet the college game brought greater physicality, with forwards 40 and 50 pounds heavier than him. Even worse, Johnson spent his first two years at UNC playing a lot at the center position. So, add another 20 or 30 pounds to the players Johnson matched up with as a center.

Williams had to convince Johnson that gaining weight, though a trying process, would benefit him in the long run. That the weight gain wouldn’t affect his athleticism. The athleticism that led him to two high school state titles in the high jump during track and field season.

“There’s ... a transition period for Brice,” Williams said. “Brice is worrying about the extra weight affecting his running or jumping. So I say, ‘It’s not going to do that if you put it out of our mind that it can affect your strength and ability to get that rebound.’”

The two-year transition on the path to building a bigger Brice has been rough, especially this summer when the forward battled recurring ankle injuries, and running up and down the court with the new weight didn’t seem to help.

“I wasn’t really comfortable with (the weight),” he said. “I started to get out of shape. It started to affect me a lot. Then, as conditioning started, I started to get a lot more comfortable with it.”

Johnson’s current comfort has been determined by his routine, which relies heavily on two things: “Eat as much as I can. Lift weights,” he says.

He’s anxious to test out his new frame in the regular season.

“I won’t be bullied,” he said. “I can be the bully now.”

And though he hasn’t said it, Johnson’s weight gain has led to perhaps his biggest accomplishment yet at UNC. His more solid stature, coupled with his veteran leadership, has Johnson poised to claim the full-time starting power forward job that evaded him for quite some time.

In two seasons as a Tar Heel, Johnson has started just four out of the 70 games he’s played.

“I’m gonna have to earn every thing I get,” he said.

Earn every single pound and every single minute as a starter.

sports@dailytarheel.com