NCAA TOURNAMENT

Despite his small stature, Winthrop's Keon Johnson plays big

Michael Cohen

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Winthrop's Keon Johnson (right) drives against Campbell's Shane Whitfield.

When the Winthrop men’s basketball team convened for its annual photo, members of the program arranged themselves in rows beneath a hoop. The five coaches were seated in front, and everyone else stood behind.

With symmetry the ultimate goal, the heights of players gradually crescendo as you move from the perimeter toward the middle. The only exception is a steep ravine to one side of the picture, where a player wearing jersey No. 5 looks several years younger than anyone around him. He is half a head shorter than the teammate to his right, who happens to be 6-foot guard Hunter Sadlon, and a full head shorter than the teammate on his left, the 6-foot-5 swingman Tevin Prescott.

In other words, the player wearing jersey No. 5 is small. Really small.

His name is Keon Johnson, and despite his Lilliputian stature — 5 foot, 7 inches if you believe the roster, 5 foot, 5 inches if you believe a quote from his head coach — Johnson is the 10th-best scorer in the country at 22.5 points per game. Underestimate him at your own risk.

“He’s a ton of fun to watch,” said Dave Friedman, radio voice of the Eagles, “just like any 5-6 or 5-7 dude would be playing against all the big guys.”

During a season in which he eclipsed Winthrop’s all-time scoring record, Johnson propelled the Eagles (26-6, 15-3 Big South) to their first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2010. Winthrop, which received an automatic bid for winning the Big South tournament, is seeded 13th in the South Regional and will play No. 4 Butler (23-8, 12-6 Big East) 12:30 p.m. Thursday at the BMO Harris Bradley Center. The Eagles are 11-point underdogs.

“It’s very exciting,” Johnson said in a phone interview Monday evening. “Whenever you get a chance to showcase your talents you want to be excited and ready to go, show everybody what you can do. This is a great opportunity for me to do that, and I think I’m prepared for it. I just can’t wait.”

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If Johnson can replicate the dynamism he conjured all season — every high-arcing three-pointer, hesitation dribble and contortionist layup — viewers across the country are likely to cheer for the player whose volcanic scoring emboldens the average Joe. In a sport revolutionized by height and length, Johnson gives the rest of us hope.

“I just look at it as reality,” Johnson said. “I just take it on, you know what I mean? It happens every time I have an interview or a conversation with somebody they bring up the height. But I pay it no mind. That’s why I go out and play the way I do with a chip on my shoulder because of that.”

The guard's numbers are eye-popping. Of Winthrop’s 32 games this season, Johnson scored at least 20 points 21 times. He had six 30-point games and one 40-point game. He was held to single digits just four times all year.

And there’s more. Johnson has averaged 26.5 points per game since Jan. 28. He averaged 29 points per game in the Big South tournament last week. For the season he shot 40% from three-point range and 87% from the free-throw line. He made at least 4 three-pointers in a game 15 times.

Of the eight teams traveling to Milwaukee this week, Nevada is the only other school with a scorer in the top 50 nationwide — guard Marcus Marshall averages 19.8 points per game. Johnson is 31 places ahead of him.

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“If he hits one or two, there’s a pretty good chance he’s going to hit three, four, five or six,” Friedman said. “I mean, he can really stroke it and you can kind of see it building. Once he hits the first, if he hits another one his whole body just shows this fire and he gets going.

“He will score 10 points in 80 seconds or something. He’ll come down and hit a three, come down hit a three, and at that point you might as well call a timeout because the chances that he’s going to hit two or three more are very, very strong.”

Four years ago, Johnson arrived at Winthrop as the third-string point guard. He won the starting job within weeks and, as Friedman put it, “he’s pretty much been the guy ever since.”

Come Thursday, the smallest player on the court faces his biggest challenge yet.

“As a competitor you want to feel unguardable,” Johnson said. “I feel like that any time I get on the floor.”