On Oct. 7, Drew Johnson was bowhunting behind his house in Caledonia when his job hunt came to an end.
Johnson, a graduate student at the Mississippi University for Women, spent the past year as an assistant coach with the Owls’ men’s basketball team. But in early October, when head women’s coach Howard White Jr. left to take an assistant position at Edward Waters College in Jacksonville, Johnson decided to apply to fill the vacancy.
He thought he’d held his own in both a phone interview and an interview on campus, but when the phone call from MUW athletic director Jason Trufant came, he wasn’t expecting it.
“Ruined my hunt,” Johnson said. “But, you know, it’s OK.”
When Trufant explained why he was calling, the disturbance was forgiven.
“Whenever he told me, ‘We want to offer you the job,’ literally everything just kind of blurred out,” Johnson said.
Out in the woods with his brother — now his student assistant — Johnson’s head spun as he tried to process the news. Not ideal for the hunt.
“After I got the phone call, you go back to being silent in the woods … it’s very hard,” he said.
Still juggling the classes he needs to graduate in May with his master’s in public health, Johnson had just been handed the reins of the defending USCAA national champions. No biggie.
“No pressure,” Johnson said, smiling. “No pressure. No pressure.”
Alright, maybe a little.
“It’s very big shoes to fill,” Johnson admitted. “What Coach White did here is remarkable, and I’ve never heard of an instance where someone comes in the first year of the program and wins a national championship. That’s unheard of — at least, I’ve never heard of it. I understand the legacy that Coach White left behind just in his short time here, and I want to pick up where he left off. I definitely want to carry this tradition as far as it’ll go. He left behind a great legacy, and I just want to be a part of that and leave my own stamp on it if I can.”
The Owls are just one year removed from revival after the school went 15 years without a basketball program, and what a year it was. White, the former head coach at Concordia College in Alabama, led The W to a 21-6 season capped off with a 69-46 win over Maine-Fort Kent in the USCAA championship game.
This spring, the school was granted entrance into NCAA Division III, but the Owls are still on a provisionary period that lasts at least two years. That means The W is “unattached,” not yet a member of a Division III conference, and Johnson is trying to schedule as many DIII teams as he can — especially early in the season before conference play leaves the Owls as the odd school out.
The change in coaching and in competition complicates things for the Owls, five of whom return from last season’s title team. But senior forward MyNeka Frazier expressed confidence that The W won’t miss a beat when its season starts Saturday against Southeastern Baptist in Laurel.
“We’re gonna have some new rules,” Frazier said. “We do things a little different. Hopefully we just have the same goal as last year.”
If the Owls can stay focused and adjust to the new faces they’ll see — a new coach, new teammates and new opponents — Frazier doesn’t think they can do merely as well as last year’s squad. She knows more can be achieved.
“We want to do better than last year,” Frazier said. “Cut our losses down, cut our turnovers down.”
She knows, as does Johnson, what the Owls do best — using their speed to cut into defenses; scoring inside efficiently — and knows maximizing those aspects of their game can get them back to the top.
But as always, there are things to work on.
“We need to work on getting the ball up the court, getting our big players right and handling the ball a little better,” Frazier said.
For East Mississippi Community College transfer forward Kyla Temple, a Columbus High product, Frazier’s words perhaps apply doubly. The 5-10 junior — one of the Owls’ tallest players — still knows she needs to work on ball security as she continues to develop.
Frazier, senior forward Qiayon Bailey and junior forward Meosha Barnum (temporarily sidelined with a knee injury) are the Owls’ only three players 6 feet or taller. In short, The W knows it’s undersized.
“We don’t have the size, but we do have the speed and the talent to get the mission done,” Temple said. “We play like the size is there. It’s not there, but it’s in us.”
That mentality, Johnson said, is evident in many forms when the Owls hit the court this fall. At the end of each practice, the team breaks it down with “national champs on three,” and it makes Johnson happy to observe.
“They definitely want something for themselves, and I think that’s the first step toward being a good team is wanting it,” he said. “I’m very excited to coach this group.”
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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