Johnson coaching in March Madness
Lyons Brook native an assistant with Vermont, which plays Duke in first round
No one knows better than Nathan Johnson how far it is from Pictou County to coaching against Duke University in the NCAA March Madness tournament.
The 38-year-old from Lyons Brook is in his first season on the bench with the University of Vermont and the Catamounts qualified for the storied college basketball tournament after winning their third straight America East Championship. Their reward was an opening round matchup against the legendary Blue Devils at the Barclays Centre in New York, the same arena where the Brooklyn Nets play.
It's all still a little hard to fathom for Nova Scotia's lone representative at the event.
"You watch it on TV as a kid but now you're a part of it, you're here and you're playing Duke at 7:10 (Eastern time) on Friday," the Catamounts assistant coach said. "It's just so cool to step back and think about that."
Johnson's coaching journey from smalltown Nova Scotia to basketball's promised land started after injuries derailed his playing career. He made a promising start in the AUS as a guard with the UPEI Panthers in 2004-05, winning the team's rookie of the year award after averaging eight points per game. But a torn ACL stopped Johnson in his tracks.
He didn't play at all in 2005-06 and transferred to St. Francis Xavier, where he did his best from 2006 to 2008 to bounce back from the devastating knee injury, but then terrible luck struck again. Johnson tore his ACL for a second time and the writing was on the wall.
"After I tore my ACL twice and I was doing my education degree at X, I helped Matt Skinn with the women's team. That was my first experience with coaching," said Johnson, a graduate of Northumberland Regional High School. "I had been away from basketball for a year and was just working and going to school. I'd been thinking about maybe getting back into it and Matt approached me and said 'I could use some help. Could you help me?'
"I jumped on board and that ended up being one of the best coaching experiences I've had in my life."
His first taste of coaching with Skinn, now in his 13th year as the head coach of the Cape Breton Capers men's team, lit the fire for Johnson. He hooked up with another well-known coach at Lakehead University, who became his next mentor in what's become a long line of career influences.
"I did that one year at X and finished my education degree, then went with a childhood friend - Scott Morrison - at Lakehead," Johnson said. "I was there for two years while I did my Masters in education. That was with the men's team and that was also a great experience."
"Scott's from P.E.I. and he was one of the first guys to kind of put his arm around me and offer to show me
the ropes," he added. "So watching his path and his trajectory from Lakehead to being associate coach with the Utah Jazz, it's crazy. He's a childhood friend who used to babysit me and his parents were my mother's high school principal in Prince Edward Island, he's in the NBA and I'm a Division 1 coach. It's really neat to see how it's all played out."
ON THE MOVE
After graduating from Lakehead, Johnson moved to Nunavut to teach Grades 5 and 6 but also coached a high school girls' team.
"That was when it really gave me the bug that maybe I could do this professionally," he said. "Those girls were amazing and it was just one of those experiences where you have a first-hand account of how basketball can change lives. It really made me think that maybe I could do this for a long time."
After two years up North, Johnson's next stop was at the NBL level in Ontario, followed by a stint running the Orangeville Prep program in suburban Toronto. That opened the door to an opportunity in China, where he distinguished himself as someone who could identify and develop players in what is now one of basketball's fastest growing hotbeds. Dartmouth's Lindell Wigginton is currently playing for the Xinjiang Flying Tigers after spending parts of three seasons with the NBA'S Milwaukee Bucks.
"I spent three years there coaching professionally and it was awesome," Johnson said. "It was a little bit of a culture shock but I was really fortunate. I had my own translator and driver so things were pretty easy for me. It could've been much worse."
Despite how much Johnson loved his position in
China, his goal was always to make it back to North America to continue climbing the coaching ladder and his next opportunity came at Memphis University in 2021. Johnson spent two seasons on the Tigers bench helping former NBA all-star Penny Hardaway and Hall of Famer Larry Brown, who was one of top coaches in the NBA and NCAA for decades.
"It was such a great experience coaching in Memphis," Johnson said. "Penny is such a fantastic coach and Larry Brown was also there and we became really good friends. I learned so much from both of them and, even today I talk to (Brown) all the time and use him as a resource. It's kind of surreal because I remember watching him on TV my whole life when he was coaching Allen Iverson in Philadelphia and then the Detroit Pistons.
"It's really neat to have a legend who you grew up idolizing have you call you and ask how you're doing. It's really cool to have that relationship with him."
FAMILY CONNECTION
Johnson had every intention of continuing in Memphis but a family connection spawned an even better situation about a year ago. His brother Bryson had been an assistant coach at Vermont but took a new position as associate coach at Holy Cross after the 2022-23 season so there was a vacancy on the Catamounts bench. Bryson played four seasons of NCAA Division 1 basketball at Bucknell University, including the final two as captain.
"Bryson was here for two years and he loved it", said Johnson, whose mother Peggy Maclean played for Dalhousie from 1983 to 1985. "He got to know the staff really well and really liked working here so when he took the
job at Holy Cross, they asked if I would come there and I jumped at it."
Similar to what he observed at Memphis with Hardaway and Brown, Johnson saw how much his new coach in Vermont prioritized team culture and personal character in his players. The way he describes it, the Catamounts do not tolerate selfishness or bad attitudes because that breeds negativity and toxicity. Teams that allow that kind of energy divide themselves and cannot win.
Johnson pointed to Vermont's year-long improvement and late-season peak as proof the principle works and stresses how the team concept cannot be compromised at any cost. The Catamounts are on a 10-game winning streak, the fourth-longest active run in the NCAA.
"Working for a coach like John Becker, he's a legend and just so good at understanding people and knowing how to push what buttons and how to establish a culture," Johnson said. "I'm really fortunate to work for someone like him. He really gets it more than just the X's and O's, even though he's also fantastic at that. he just really understands people at such an elite level and that's such an important part of coaching and building a team.
"And the kids here are fantastic, they just work so hard and always want to be in the gym. They listen and do all the right things so they make it really easy. This experience has been really cool for me."
MARCH MADNESS
And that all brings it back to where Johnson and the Catamounts are now – a couple of days away from taking on one of the most famous programs in American college basketball history. Names like Christians Laettner, Grant Hill, Bobby Hurley and, of course, Coach
K are known to anyone who follows NCAA hoops and the Blue Devils remain one of the powerhouses in the sport.
Duke (24-8) is the 11thranked team in the nation and enters the tournament as the No. 4 seed in the South side of the bracket, while Vermont (28-6) is 13th.
"Our league is a good league but it's only a singlebid league so we had to win our conference tournament to get in", said Johnson, who coached at March Madness with Memphis in 2022 and 2023. "At Memphis, we didn't necessarily have to win the league to get in as opposed to an environment like this where you can't make any mistakes. You've got to finish it and be champions to get in.
"But what's great about having to go through that is we feel like we're playing our best basketball right now. Our players are all committed to doing the right things and we play at a pace most teams don't really do. We focus on defence first and that's what Coach Becker preaches so we feel we're elite defensively and we're really evolving offensively. If we get hot, we have a chance against anybody."
A Catamounts win would be one of the quintessential Cinderella upsets that make March Madness what it is. CBS will broadcast the game live.
"It's so much fun because my brothers and I all learned basketball from my mother so it's kind of like a testament to her that we've all been able to go so far in basketball," said Johnson, whose other brother Ben played Division 2 at College of Saint Rose and was later a league all-star at Lakehead. He became a lawyer in Halifax and does some coaching at the youth level.
"She taught us the game the right way and we all love it but it's all still kind of surreal to be at this level now."