Johnson, Eagles chase success of yesteryear
Erik Johnson has seen the Boston College women’s basketball team at its best firsthand.
As an Eagles assistant from 2005-08, Johnson arrived at The Heights at the tail end of the program’s greatest era under coach Cathy Inglese. BC had made six of the previous seven NCAA tournaments, so a winning culture had already been established.
After a stint as head coach at Denver, Johnson returned in 2012 hoping to replicate the success his former boss had with the Eagles. But as he begins his sixth season with tomorrow’s noon opener against Bryant, that success has been hard to reestablish. BC has finished below .500 — including a 9-21 record in 2016-17 — in each of his five seasons, and patience has worn a bit thin.
“It’s amazing how long it takes to be able to build a culture that coach Inglese had built here,” Johnson said. “It’s taken longer than I thought. There were some recruits that we got early that maybe would have done better had they had better culture and better leaders and better mentors to be able to bring them along.”
Johnson admitted he and his staff made some wrong choices on recruits who they believed were talented, but didn’t end up buying into the team culture the coaches were trying to foster.
“I think sometimes recruits will pick a school based on, ‘Wow, this is the ACC, this is the glitz and the glamour,’ and then they’re not necessarily the right fit for Boston College,” Johnson said. “When we have been our most successful, it’s because our teams have bought in, truly given up the ‘me’ for the ‘we.’ ”
While it has taken some time, Johnson thinks his program is now headed in the right direction.
BC was picked last in the ACC preseason poll, something Johnson expected after the Eagles lost their top two leading scorers from a team that finished in last place, yet the coach is optimistic.
The Eagles return three sophomores — Georgia Pineau, Taylor Ortlepp and Emma Guy — who made big contributions as freshmen. Johnson is also excited about two freshmen — Milan BoldenMorris and Syndey Lowery — who he believes will contribute right away.
“We’re going to surprise a lot of people,” Johnson said. “We are young, a lot of our most talented players are freshmen and sophomores, but I’ve got seniors that buy in, that are showing positive leadership, in ways our team hasn’t experienced in the past, and that’s been great. Our culture is 100 percent better than it was a year ago.”
And that’s something he hopes will carry on. Johnson has hit the recruiting trail hard, and it seems like he’s now starting to get the players necessary to bring the program back toward where it was a decade ago.
“The class that we’re going to sign in 2018 here coming up is another really, really good one, so we’ve got three consecutive really strong, talented and high character recruiting classes,” Johnson said. “It’s absolutely the path we need to be on.”