LSU men’s basketball coach Trent Johnson wore a purple “LSU basketball” shirt and leaned against the purple padding on the goal post under one basket during the Tigers’ preseason intrasquad scrimmage.The Tigers’ new leader silently peered out at the action on the other end of the floor and blended in perfectly with his surroundings. The contemplative 52-year-old was even hard to spot at times.And that’s exactly how the former Stanford and Nevada coach likes it.”The culture here’s more a blue-collared atmosphere and that sort of thing,” Johnson said. “I don’t get so much caught up in that because my whole life revolves around going to the gym, coming to the office, doing my job.”While Johnson tries to block out external factors and focus on the on-the-court product in his first season at LSU, he brings several new dynamics to Baton Rouge.
THE ARRIVAL    Johnson took the LSU job after former coach John Brady’s dismissal.    Then-LSU Athletic Director Skip Bertman fired Brady after an 8-13 start to the 2007-2008 season — Brady’s 11th as LSU’s coach. Interim coach Butch Pierre finished the season 5-5 before accepting an assistant coaching position at Oklahoma State following Johnson’s hiring.    Johnson didn’t waste any time looking ahead to the on-court product at the press conference announcing his hire in April.    “Meeting [LSU System] President [John] Lombardi, I can do the math,” Johnson said. “He was at Florida, hired [Florida coach] Billy Donovan – a lot of national championships. I was hired by [LSU Athletic Director] Joe [Alleva], who’s been at Duke for 27 years. I get the message. I understand – I really do.”    Johnson has since led LSU to a 6-0 start, the Tigers’ best start since the 2003-2004 season, but he’s not going to get excited with so much basketball left to be played.    “What do you want me to do, jump up and down like we won the Rose Bowl or something?” Johnson asked after after defeating Northwestern State about two weeks ago. “If you guys are waiting on me to jump up and down, it’s not happening. It’s just who I am.”READY FOR ACTIONJohnson lounges comfortably in his spacious third-floor office about a week before his inaugural season at LSU began.The carpet is spotless. Plaques and commemorative basketballs are placed neatly on his shelves. His large wooden desk is orderly and almost completely cleared, and there is no chair for visitors directly on its front side.He leans back in a large maroon leather chair in a more casual section of his office — complete with a matching sofa — and vaguely discusses expectations for the season.”It’s so hard to win at this level — in all sports — because there’s so much parity, but it’s a process. It’s a journey,” Johnson says. “To sit up here and say at this time of the year, ‘We want to go to the Elite Eight or the Final Four or the Sweet 16 —’ everybody does. But you have to do the little things during the course or the way … If you do those things, and you understand … the rest of that stuff will take care of itself.”Johnson knows as well as any coach he can’t let his team glance too far ahead in the schedule.”If you start thinking, ‘We’re going to be playing so-and-so in January, and that’s going to be a big, marquee game,’ as opposed to worrying about today’s practice or today’s film section, then you’re just going to go up and down,” he gestures.He adds that any successful team has to be a little fortunate.”You always have the intangibles,” Johnson explains. “Would I be here if [LSU starters] Tasmin Mitchell, Chris Johnson and Garrett Temple didn’t have some injuries during the course of the year last year? Probably not. So you’ve got to remain injury-free … When you start talking about goals and putting things down on paper, nobody in any year will say, ‘Well they would have been better if he hadn’t broken his hand.'”Johnson says dealing with obstacles like injuries will be his team’s real test.”There’s going to be tough times through the course of this year, but as long as we stay the course we’ll have an opportunity to compete game-in and game-out,” he says. “And when there is adversity, we have to stay strong. Adversity doesn’t build character — it doesn’t. Adversity doesn’t build character. It reveals it. We’ll see.”Daniel Novinson, former sports editor and men’s basketball beat writer for The Stanford Daily, said Johnson has a knack for pulling his teams together as seasons progress.”In more recent years, you’d see the teams kind of start off slow, but they’d build,” Novinson said. “They’d really stick together, and they’d finish strong down the stretch. Maybe that’s just a fluke, but maybe you could read into that and say that’s exactly what you want out of a team — they’re coming together at the right time.”COMMITMENT TO EXCELLENCEWhile fans and media will inevitably judge Johnson by his ability to build winning teams, Novinson said his priority has always been to build successful individuals.”It comes with the territory at Stanford that anyone who’s a coach there is going to talk about ‘Our kids aren’t just athletes, they’re student-athletes. And it’s not just what happens on the court,'” Novinson said. “But I think he genuinely meant it and genuinely realized there was more to life than what happened on the basketball court.”Stanford senior forward Lawrence Hill said that’s the attitude Johnson always tried to instill in him and his teammates.”It’s not always about the basketball side of things,” Hill said. “He always put up that we’re student-athletes, and he takes everything seriously. He made sure we’d always present ourselves in a good way, and we’d go to children’s hospitals and charity events. Those were the times that you could really see him happy and glad we could be a part of it. He always said, ‘You’re students before you’re athletes, and that’s going to carry a lot more weight in the end.'”Hill credits Johnson for helping him grow into both the player and the man he is today.”When he recruited me and I came in as a freshman, I really didn’t take the game as serious as I should have and take life as seriously as I should have,” Hill said. “He helped me mature a lot as an individual and went above and beyond what a coach really even needs to do. Everyone expects a coach to help in practice and to keep us out of trouble, but he’s the reason I’m a lot more mature and confident in my life right now.”Novinson also said his time covering Johnson and the team as a student reporter benefited him.”The whole experience really taught me some humility,” Novinson said. “I came in — Stanford student, 20-years-old, thinking I knew everything — and he just kind of had a broader perspective on things. And I think kind of in the same way he teaches the players, he kind of taught me to appreciate a broader perspective on things and realize what was important and what wasn’t so much.”Johnson touched upon the importance of academics following the Tigers’ 84-63 win against Cal State Fullerton on Tuesday.”The next 11 days are probably the most important from the standpoint of academics,” he said. “The kids will be off until Dec. 6, which is Saturday … we really have to do a good job in the classroom.”THE TEACHER AND THE STUDENTS    Johnson has brought a new closed-practice policy to LSU — a change from the days when reporters could stop by the PMAC to watch Brady or Pierre conduct practice.   ”He’ll be the first one to say he’s kind of old school,” Novinson said. “He has a definitive way of how things should be done.”   Johnson matter-of-factly explains his use of the closed-practice policy at each of his head coaching stops.  ”It’s a teaching environment,” he says. “It’s a classroom. When you go to a biology class, you don’t have nine new people in there with cameras, do you?”    The teacher says he’s been pleased with his new students’ acceptance of the positive lesson plan he’s brought in with his closed-door policy.    “The guys that have been here — all of them — but the seniors, they’ve really more than bought in and been receptive to what we’ve asked them to do,” Johnson says. “They’ve done a very good job of changing the negativity that surrounded this program in a short four- or five-month period … Those guys have been good, but why wouldn’t they? Everything’s been fine … It hasn’t gotten tough.”    Senior guard Garrett Temple said the classroom atmosphere is usually serious, with some exceptions.    “[Johnson’s] demeanor in practice varies,” Temple said. “Most of the time, it’s all business. Sometimes he’ll just start laughing over something, and the players will want to laugh. We can’t laugh at practice, but when coach Johnson laughs, everybody says, ‘OK. It’s OK to laugh now.'”    Hill said Johnson brings a serious attitude to his players both on and off the court.   ”He doesn’t leave any room for error, and there’s no questioning his passion for the game,” Hill said. “That helps us as players to do the same and look at the game as a battle. He also helped us a lot off the court with that when we needed to understand that our words carried on to the media and our actions around friends. Everything is a very business-like approach.”    Johnson says his attitude and policies stem from his protectiveness of his players.    “My demeanor is intense, and it’s a very competitive world we live in,” Johnson says. “But as it relates to my players that I coach, I’m very protective. I’m very protective socially and as it relates to the press and as it relates to during the course of the game when they’re doing things the right way.”COMPETITIVE INTENSITY    Fans had a chance to see some of Johnson’s protectiveness and intensity in the spotlight earlier in March when he was ejected from Stanford’s second-round NCAA tournament game against Marquette.   Curtis Shaw, an official known for his quickness to call technical fouls and eject coaches, threw Johnson out as the nationally televised game went to commercial late in the first half.     The Cardinal managed to win the game without its coach. Fans and the media questioned Shaw’s decision after the game, but Johnson accepts full responsibility.    “A lot’s been made out of it that my conduct was not in a situation where I should’ve gotten tossed or gotten a technical,” he explains. “But the bottom line is that I put that basketball team in a very, very bad situation where it could have cost those kids an opportunity to advance. That won’t ever happen again.”    Hill said he the Stanford players were shocked when Johnson was ejected.   ”I’ve seen him do a lot worse and not get T’ed up for it,” Hill said. “But he did take responsibility. After the game, he said he was proud of us, and that’s what it’s always been about: Us going out there and winning the game and how little he had to do with it and how he trusted us to be able to finish. It was a very touching moment going into the Sweet 16.”    While Johnson says LSU fans shouldn’t expect to see him ejected from any games, Temple said they can expect his coach to be passionate on the sideline.    “He’s going to be intense,” Temple said. “He’s an intense guy, and he wants to win. He wants his team to play hard, and he’s going to do whatever he can to make that happen.”    Johnson recalls a student worker at Stanford once questioned why people took issue with his level of intensity during games.    “She’d always say, ‘Coach, why does everybody make a big deal about your demeanor on the sidelines? I’m really not in that good a mood when I’m studying for a test, and I’m for damn sure not in a good mood when I’m taking one,'” Johnson says. “I thought that was pretty interesting, and I said, ‘You know what? Why don’t you tell some of these guys who are writing these stories about my facial expressions?'”THE JOURNEY    Johnson lists every coach and athletic director to have given him a job and others he has had a chance to work with when asked who his greatest mentors in the game of basketball have been.He even includes legendary San Francisco 49ers football coach Bill Walsh, the innovator of the now famous “West Coast Offense.”    “I was very fortunate and blessed to be around coach Walsh when he was the interim athletic director at Stanford,” Johnson says. “I spent a lot of time talking to him.”    He highlights former Washington basketball coach Lynn Nance as perhaps his No. 1 mentor in the sport when Johnson was Nance’s assistant in the early ’90s.   ”But all that being said, probably my background in terms of how I was raised by my mother is probably the one that gave me my core values in terms of your discipline, your approach, how you see things and how you respect people and all those types of things,” Johnson says.    The Seattle native says he did not know he wanted to be a basketball coach growing up, but he always wanted to be involved in athletics.   ”I played baseball, and I played football before I played basketball,” Johnson says. “I was always active in all three sports with a little track, but my junior year in high school was when … I knew I wanted to be involved in the game of basketball in some capacity.”    Johnson says even when he realized in college at Boise State he wanted to become involved in coaching, he still never thought he would be a head coach.   ”I knew I wanted to coach. I knew I wanted to be involved with kids in some capacity probably going into my sophomore year in college,” he says. “But being a head coach has never been something that you would say was a goal. I’ve always just said I wanted to be involved in the game.”    Johnson coached at Boise High School from 1980 to 1985 before becoming an assistant at Utah under Len Archibald.    From Utah, Johnson moved on to assistant jobs at Washington, Rice and Stanford before receiving his first head coaching opportunity at Nevada in 1999 and then a chance to return to Stanford as head coach in 2004.    READY FOR A CHANGE    “Why would he bolt Stanford for LSU?” Novinson questioned. “This is going to offend some LSU people, but — trying to be as objective about this as possible — it would seem like kind of a lateral move.”    While both Novinson and Johnson both credited LSU and the Southeastern Conference, Stanford and the Pacific-10 Conference have both housed more successful basketball the last couple years.    Novinson said a sense of disrespect could have played into the move.    “The feeling was that the [Athletic Director] Bob Bowlsby kind of dragged his feet on giving him a contract extension,” Novinson said. “Trent Johnson kind of said, ‘You know what, I’m a proud man, and I’m a damn good basketball coach … I have somebody that’s going to pay me more money at LSU. They can pay me a lot more money than Stanford can … and I’m going to be wanted at LSU, and I’m not going to feel like I’m not appreciated, so why not leave?'”    Johnson, whose base salary at LSU is $1.2 million each year, will never accept individual attention.    “There is way too much of this Trent Johnson nonsense,” Johnson said after the Cal State Fullerton game. “These [players] are the ones buying in. They are listening. They are the ones playing.”    But Novinson said mistaking that humility for weakness would be a mistake.    “He’s not going to be a guy that’s going to beat his chest and say, ‘Look at how great our team is. Look at how great a job I’m doing,'” Novinson said. “But at the same time, don’t mistake that for a guy that’s going to let himself get walked over if he’s feeling disrespected … He’s going to do what he has to do. He might not be loud and forceful about it, but the guy’s a grown man. He knows how to take care of himself and fight for himself.”    Johnson had accumulated Coach of the Year awards in both the Western Athletic Conference and Pac-10 and six consecutive NCAA postseason appearances between Nevada and Stanford when LSU hired him in April. But he has brought more to Baton Rouge than an impressive track record.BREAKING GROUND    Johnson became the first black head coach of an LSU men’s sport when Alleva hired him.    He followed former women’s basketball coach Pokey Chatman and women’s tennis coach Tony Minnis as LSU’s only permanent black head coaches.   ”I don’t look at that,” Johnson says. “I understand the significance of it, but this team and me as a coach with my staff, we want to be known as a good basketball team — a well-coached basketball team. And competition has no color.”    Novinson said while Johnson will always downplay the significance, he thinks it probably means something to it.    “I would like to think it would matter to him, and I’m sure on some level he’s proud of it,” Novinson said. “But I’m also sure he’ll be the first person to tell you that he’d rather be known as good basketball coach period than a good black basketball coach.”    Johnson coincidentally has the opportunity to coach the son of the man credited with breaking the color barrier in LSU sports in 1971.    “Thirty-eight years ago I was a guy that signed to come to school here as the first African-American major sports guy,” said Collis Temple Jr., Garrett’s father, following Johnson’s hire. “So 38 years later and a couple of sons coming through this situation, it’s really a real sensitive kind of thing. And candidly, I almost teared up when I knew a little while back that this guy was going to be tabbed to do this.”    Johnson says racial and social implications aside, he’s just happy to be able to coach.    “It’s special having the opportunity to be the head coach at LSU and to be a coach at this level,” he explains. “There’s 320-some-odd Division-I jobs, and you look at all the qualified guys across the country – assistant coaches and head coaches. To have this opportunity, that’s what makes this special.”WHAT’S NEXTJohnson says he hasn’t considered the prospect of leaving the college ranks to be an NBA head coach.”I look at today and tomorrow,” he says. “My dream is to make LSU or the program that I am affiliated with the best it can be. I’m very fortunate and very blessed to have a Division-I job and to have this opportunity.”And just as he brushes off questions of any future jobs after LSU, he deflects any probe into how his new home or his new job may be a shift from his last.”It’s not different. The rim’s 10 feet high, and the game is what it is,” he says. “When you start talking about culture – again, I could have took a job in Jamaica, but my life revolves around the game of basketball.”—-Contact Jerit Roser at [email protected]