Remember, back at the beginning of the odd offseason for the UVA women’s basketball program, when star point guard Kymora Johnson hit the transfer portal?
It was readily apparent that she was going to leave – with the head coach who recruited her having been unceremoniously let go, a new coach coming in out of nowhere to replace her, and Johnson about to enter her senior season, ahead of almost certainly being a first-round pick in next spring’s WNBA Draft.
Charlottesville native or not, Kymora Johnson just had too much on the line to risk coming back.
And then: she came back.
And from what you’re about to read, she did it knowing nothing about the new coach, Aaron Roussell, who is 460-194 in 22 seasons at the University of Chicago, Bucknell and Richmond.
“I don’t really know that I expected anything. I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I didn’t know him,” said Johnson, a two-time first-team All-ACC selection, who led Virginia from the NCAA Tournament bubble to the Sweet Sixteen this past spring.
This, as Dawn Staley, the three-time national title-winning coach at South Carolina, and, of course, the greatest player in UVA women’s hoops history, would have loved to have had Johnson running point for her this fall and winter, in pursuit of another ring.
It will, quite obviously, help Roussell immensely to be able to build his version of Virginia Basketball around Kymora Johnson.
“I think when you see a superstar, you don’t know the ins and outs and how much is God’s gift, how much of this is really trying though perfect her craft. The eagerness and willingness to learn I think is really what stood out,” Roussell said of Johnson this week at the ACC Tipoff in Charlotte.
“I probably have said this to her, I’ve said this to everybody that would listen. Obviously, her being from Charlottesville, everybody seems to know her in Charlottesville. I think the opening that the world got to her last March, you know, more than just Charlottesville got to see her,” Roussell said.
“But this is not her just saying, hey, I’m a finished product. She is eager to learn, whether that’s in film, she asks the why. I think it challenges me to make sure that she sees the why behind all of it, but she’s a true student of the game,” Roussell said.
This one is the odd situation where Johnson, as the point guard, which is the position most akin to coach-on-the-floor, might know more about the ACC than the actual coach does, given Johnson’s three years as the starting point guard for Virginia.
Johnson isn’t so sure that’s the case, for her part.
“I don’t know that we’ve really talked about it much, but I think that he is a nerd of the game, and I think he knows more than we do about the ACC,” Johnson said. “I mean, I think he’s going to figure it out as we go and that’s part of the process, but I do think that he has a good feel about it.”
And he has an important building block in Johnson, who the coach acknowledges he will lean on as he acclimates to the night-to-night in the rugged ACC.
“With Kymora, obviously at the point guard spot, as a new coach, and you have somebody like that that knows the league, knows everything else. I think there’s so much newness with the staff, even the players that are coming back in new roles that have some solid backbone, it’s obviously a comfort for me as a coach,” Rousell said.
The buy-in from Johnson, who looks forward to playing in Roussell’s offense, which puts a high priority on spacing and movement, and, per Roussell, “requires a lot of trust from coaches into our players,” and a focus in practice on getting his players “to learn how to play,” is an important factor here.
“It’s a lot of spacing, which is really fun to be in, a lot of spacing, a lot of cutting, moving, just playing off of each other,” Johnson said. “I think the biggest thing that I’ve noticed and tried to implement is getting teammates open and getting them the best shot possible, not putting them in jail, right?
“It’s been really fun to see his system come to life. Obviously, I made the decision to come back. I saw a little bit of it at the beginning, but playing in it has been really fun,” Johnson said.
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Chris Graham
