This has not happened in a long time. It did not happen when Johnson, a 6-foot-9, 228-pound forward on the North Carolina men’s basketball team, scored 18 points and pulled down 14 rebounds to fuel No. 15 UNC’s 78-74 win against Florida State on Saturday at the Smith Center.
It did not happen when Johnson, who is averaging a career high 7.7 boards a game, grabbed Justin Jackson’s free-throw miss on the final play of the game and playfully crossed over a towel boy before jogging across the court to offer his hand in sportsmanship to FSU.
It did not happen when Johnson, who picked up his third foul with 5:35 left in the first half, spent 17 minutes on the bench. There, he stood.
So as the mercurial junior arches back in a chair in UNC player’s lounge post-game, he explains: “Before the game today, I was out watching the JV game,” Johnson said. “And I probably stood up the wrong way.” He tweaked his lower back getting out of a chair.
Johnson complained of the injury to Coach Roy Williams before the game. “I told him I wish it’d bother him in warm-ups all the time, if he’s gonna get 18 and 14,” the coach quipped. Because, he’ll tell you, this was one of Johnson’s better performances in three years.
“What play do you think I liked more than any play that Brice made in the game?” Williams quizzed reporters. Well, Coach, was it the and-one lay-in with 7:44 left in the game, followed by Johnson’s hallmark scream? Or how about the fierce putback slam about two minutes later that boosted UNC’s lead to eight and reignited the crowd? Johnson was proud of those.
“Once you get in the game, you hear that voice in the back of your head,” he says. “It’s usually Coach saying, ‘Go up strong! Go up strong! Go through the contact!’ Then you got Coach (Hubert) Davis over there saying, ‘Go through their noses!’”
He listened to the voices, and it paid off: his third double-double in five games.
