Late signee changed mind about KU after year away
AUSTIN — One day in February 2022, Cy-Fair associate athletics director Charles Ament popped into the Berry Center of Northwest Houston to observe basketball practices with the UIL playoffs in full swing.
Ament had befriended Elkins coach Albert Thomas years ago, so he took a interest in the Knights’ practice ahead of their second-round game against Cypress Creek. Ament, formerly the longtime coach at Langham Creek, couldn’t divert his eyes — or ears — from zealous junior guard Chris Johnson.
“We end by going through our defensive stuff,” Thomas said, “and afterward he (Ament) commented on how vocal he (Johnson) was. He said, ‘Is he like that all the time?’ And I said, ‘Yes, he is.’ In terms of calling out what was coming up, identifying picks, things like that.”
Forget the scoring, the playmaking, the jumbo-sized bag of moves. When Ament saw the way Johnson commanded Elkins’ defenders, he knew this kid was different.
“That kind of let me know that he was headed in the right direction,” Thomas said. “Because the toughest part in going from one level to the next is defense and attention to detail. And when someone else saw what I had already seen in him, that stood out to me.”
Johnson recently became a Texas Longhorn.
The 6-foot-4 combo guard committed to Kansas last August after transferring to Florida powerhouse Montverde Academy for his senior year. But spending those months so separated from family led Johnson to reconsider that decision.
Kansas ended up releasing the four-star freshman from his national letter of intent in early June. Johnson then signed with Texas on June 26, for a time becoming the team’s lone true freshman after former five-star signees Ron Holland (G League Ignite) and A.J. Johnson (Australia’s Illawarra Hawks) decided to skip college and start their pro careers. (Houston PSAT Academy wing Devon Pryor recently joined Johnson in Texas’ freshman class.)
According to the 247Sports composite rankings, Johnson was the third-best prospect in Texas and 53rd-best prospect in the nation during the 2023 recruiting cycle.
“Very versatile, can score, get his own shot but at the same time be a distributor,” Kansas coach Bill Self said of Johnson during last November. “The thing that people rave about with him is that he could be an elite defender, an elite collegiate defender. His game has just grown tremendously.” Johnson flowered at Elkins as a junior, averaging 19.5 points, five assists, 4.7 rebounds and 1.5 assists while steering the Knights to 30 wins and an unblemished record in district play. Those numbers dipped drastically at Montverde — with good reason.
Johnson averaged 5.9 points, 2.1 rebounds and a team-high 3.6 assists in 16.7 minutes per game for the 23-3 Eagles. He played alongside Oregon-bound Kwame Evans Jr. (No. 17 recruit in the nation), Duke-bound Sean Stewart (No. 21), Washington-bound Wesley Yates (No. 50) and fivestar junior Liam McNeely, one of Texas’ top 2024 targets.
Only two Eagles averaged double-digits points, with McNeely’s 12.4 per game the high-water mark. No one averaged more than 19 minutes per game.
“I think he was at the point where he wanted to challenge himself against the best,” Thomas said of Johnson’s move to Montverde. “He was already an upper-level Division I player. But what that allowed him to do was get ready to compete against the Division I athletes in that program.”
Spending day after day scraping against that star-studded roster sharpened Johnson’s game on both ends. He now resembles the sort of guard that should fit right into Terry’s system — selfless and defensive-minded with a real head for the game.
Playing with Oral Roberts grad transfer Max Abmas and returning junior Tyrese Hunter in the backcourt this season should help feed Johnson’s voracious appetite for hoops knowledge. And as both Albert Thomas and Charles Ament could attest, those Texas vets just might learn a thing or two from the zealous freshman.