Seniors leave a changed program

Gophers basketball players Damian Johnson and Lawrence Westbrook will leave the program following collegiate careers that were at the center of the Minnesota program’s renaissance.
Johnson and Westbrook weathered a coaching change and a tumultuous senior season to contribute to three-straight 20-win campaigns, back-to-back NCAA tournament appearances and Minnesota’s first-ever run to the Big Ten championship game.
But the start of their Gophers careers barely foretold the eventual on-court success.
They were among the final players recruited by former Gophers head coach Dan Monson.
Johnson, a forward from Thibodaux, La., was still considering Georgetown and Texas A&M before a campus visit to Minnesota convinced him of his college choice.
“I just felt comfortable here,” Johnson said. “The people here were just friendlier; there was just more of a family environment here at the time.”
Westbrook, a guard and Chandler, Ariz., native, picked the Gophers in part for a new experience.
“I just wanted to do something different,” Westbrook said. “Me being from the West Coast, try something different [and] come to the Midwest; that was the main reason.”
Coaching change
Seven games into the players’ freshman season (Johnson redshirted the 2005-06 season) , Monson, the coach who convinced both of them to come across the country to Minnesota, resigned. Suddenly, each player faced the prospect of playing for an unknown new coach.
“It’s always tough when you have a coach that recruited you [leave],” Westbrook said. “The next person that comes in didn’t recruit you, so he might feel differently than the person that brought you in.”
Johnson said he thought of transferring after the 2006-07 season but not because of the coaching turmoil.
If anything, Johnson said he would have tried to be closer to home at schools like Louisiana State, Louisiana Tech or Mississippi State.
“The weather was getting to me at the time, so I was just a little homesick for a while,” he said.
Westbrook said he also contemplated leaving but wanted to find out who the new coach would be.
On March 23, 2007, Johnson said he was sitting in his room watching ESPNews when the news broke that Tubby Smith would be hired as the next Gophers basketball coach.
“Once I found out, I called [then-freshman] Kevin Payton and [then-sophomore] Jamal [Abu-Shamala] to the room, because Jamal was my roommate,” Johnson said. “We were just watching all the stuff they were saying about it.”
Westbrook said he was excited about the hiring of Kentucky’s former national championship coach.
“I was happy, because he’s a good coach, and it was just an opportunity for me and Damian to improve ourselves and get a fresh start to play,” Westbrook said.
Johnson wasn’t as sure. Even after Smith had his first meeting with the team, Johnson said he was still anxious about players being let go in favor of a new coach’s recruits. He thought he might be vulnerable to roster changes to accommodate new players Smith might prefer.
“I thought if he was going to get rid of someone, it would have been me,” Johnson said. “I was a redshirt freshman; he’d probably get rid of someone younger than an older guy, so I just didn’t know what to expect.”
New opportunity
Instead of leaving, though, Johnson spent the summer of 2007 working hard to become a better player.
“My redshirt freshman year, I never played, I never was comfortable when I was playing out there,” Johnson said. “I wasn’t really having a coach giving me confidence at the time, so I just had to give myself confidence, focus on doing what I do best.”
Johnson said his fears were calmed after he performed well in the first few practices before the 2007-08 season, his sophomore campaign.
Westbrook said Smith made it clear he had no favorites.
“Who played before didn’t matter,” Westbrook said. “You had to earn your playing time; everybody started off with a clean slate. Once he said that, I was more than confident that I would play.”
Greater opportunity in Smith’s first season led to dramatically better on-court results for both players.
Johnson significantly increased his points per game, rebounds and blocked shots while playing 23 minutes per contest.
Westbrook more than doubled his scoring average , which he credited to Smith’s willingness to let the sophomore play valuable minutes on the court.
“Just the opportunity to play,” Westbrook said. “I really didn’t get a chance to do that my freshman year. I just got an opportunity to get more minutes; with more minutes your stats will increase.”
Success in a trying year
Johnson and Westbrook were juniors on the 2008-09 Gophers team that made the NCAA tournament and lost to No. 7 seed Texas in the East regional.
That success heightened expectations for the pair’s final season, but the off-court issues of recruits Trevor Mbakwe and Royce White were among the storylines for much of the season. But Johnson said those situations never played a role in the team’s on-court struggles.
“The off-the-court issues were mentioned a lot, but I don’t think they really affected our team,” Johnson said. “The whole team played with each other the year before; we never played with the guys that were part of the issue, so we didn’t even know what to expect from them in a game situation anyway.”
But Johnson and Westbrook admitted that losing junior point guard Al Nolen midway through the season because of academic ineligibility truly hurt the team.
“I think that was really hard for us to handle at first,” Johnson said.
The Gophers missed Nolen’s ball handling and defense, but they still had chances to win close games with sophomore Devoe Joseph in the starting job.
“We definitely missed Al, but there’s no excuses,” Westbrook said. “We had a lot of games that we should have and we could have won, and we just didn’t.”
The team clicked in time to make a deep run in the Big Ten tournament to snatch a second-straight NCAA tournament bid that seemed a long shot before the conference tournament.
“At the end of the year, the guys were the most focused and determined I’d ever seen them at practice,” Johnson said.
After Johnson and Westbrook played their final game in a first-round loss to Xavier, Smith’s name was tied to rumors about several head coaching jobs, most notably at Oregon.
Westbrook said Smith held a meeting with players in the midst of the rumors and said that he was not leaving Minnesota.
“I don’t want to put words in Coach Smith’s mouth, but when he talked to us, he just said he loves us, and he’s not going anywhere,” Westbrook said.
Hoping to stay on court
Johnson and Westbrook have their sights set on playing professionally, though Johnson, who is training in Chicago with someone referred to him by his agent, said he still needs to improve some parts of his game.
“I’m not ready right now, but that’s why I’m going to do this training,” Johnson said. “I need to improve my ball handling and shooting; becoming a more consistent shooter from deep.”
Westbrook believes his game is NBA-ready now, and he is ready to start proving it in basketball camps, summer leagues or individual workouts.
“You got to have confidence in yourself; if not, you shouldn’t be playing,” Westbrook said. “I know that a lot of overseas people and some NBA teams have expressed a lot of interest.”
Both players said they just want to keep playing.
“Obviously everybody wants to make it to the NBA, and I’ll try that,” Westbrook said. “Whether it’s playing in the NBA, which I hope, or playing overseas, just being a pro, playing for money.”
Yet both will still be able to look back on being a part of a collegiate team’s turnaround.
“I wish we could have gone further in the [NCAA] tournament, but I’m pretty happy with what we did,” Johnson said. “I’m proud to see how the young guys handled adversity. I’m proud to see how they handled it, and I feel they are going to be strong going forward.”