University of Louisiana at Lafayette Athletics
Louisiana UnLimited: Cleared View for Takeoff
12/14/2022 9:54:00 AM | Women's Basketball, Louisiana UnLimited
Face shield set aside, Tamera Johnson's transcending to another level
UL's women's basketball followers might not have recognized Tamera Johnson off the court until this season.
After all, the Lafayette native's face had been hidden from sight for most of her first two Ragin' Cajun seasons, and it wasn't a COVID-19 mask. Instead, it was a broken nose – actually, multiple broken noses – that necessitated her wearing a face shield on the court all last season.
Publicly, the former Northside High and Lafayette Christian standout didn't complain. Privately, she loathed the plexiglass-and-plastic covering that first became a part of her life during her freshman season in 2020-21.
"I wanted so much to get out of it," Johnson said. "That was the first time I ever had to wear a shield like that, and it was very uncomfortable … but I had to wear it for me to be able to play."
Johnson's shield-less now, and is leading the Cajuns in both scoring and rebounding. She's averaging 10.9 points in UL's low-scoring, defense-dominated system, to go with 7.3 rebounds, buoyed by getting the word prior to fall practice that the clumsy covering was no longer needed.
"When I was shooting, it wasn't like I couldn't see the goal, but just knowing that you couldn't see everything around you," she said. "It was hard because it would get in the way sometimes, and when I was rebounding it would be moving all the time because of all the contact."
The contact was obviously a lot more than she experienced in local high school play, even more with all of her prep teams playing zone defenses and joining an almost exclusively man-to-man defensive style with the Cajuns. But even with a first broken nose in practice during her first year, she was on her way to making an early impact.
Johnson played only 36 minutes and had only four points in the first four games of the 2020-21 season, but had a breakout performance in a road contest at La. Tech. She came off the bench for 17 points and five boards in 24 minutes and confirmed what UL coach Garry Brodhead had expected when he signed her.
"She started playing at an older age, I think in the ninth grade," Brodhead said. "For her to be where she's at now is phenomenal because she just continues to progress. There's always growth in her. Sometimes you can see it from week to week."
That was happening in her freshman year … up until she took an elbow to the nose in practice only days after her performance against Tech. That shot sidelined her for more than a month, including much of the first half of Sun Belt Conference play, and she never got back to full speed in averaging only eight minutes, 2.5 points and 1.4 boards. UL went 13-1 and won its first regular-season conference title in the 50-year history of the program that year, but Brodhead wondered how much better his team might have been had Johnson been fully healthy.
"We went to Tech and she played such a great game," Brodhead said, "and then she gets hit and she's out for what seemed like forever. It was tough because you felt that was right at the time she was starting to 'get it.'"
"I felt like I'd had a breakout (at Tech)," she said, "and I came back to practice and took another elbow. I was scared. But things like that happen a lot. I don't think that spectators understand how much it happens and how physical it is. There's so much contact going on in the game."
Last season, Johnson started all 25 games and averaged 9.8 points and 5.4 rebounds, the youngest regular player in an older group of teammates, and helped lead the Cajuns to an 18-6 record and a 9-4 mark in the Sun Belt. That was with the accursed mask on.
It was a happy day when she got word that the mask was in the past … and even a frightening moment when she was hit and her nose bloodied against Jackson State in November didn't slow her down. "The ball hit me in the face," she said of that game, "and I thought I almost had to get back in it."
Brodhead can see a different Johnson this year, in part because her rail-thin frame has put on over 20 pounds since her arrival on campus.
"She's gained a lot of strength," he said. "Nick (basketball athletic performance director Nicholas Capdepon) has done a great job with her. Their number one thing last year with Nick was, did you eat, did you eat. She was on the slender side obviously, but now she's taken on a lot more responsibility for herself and makes sure she's taking care of her body."
The slender forward whom opponents bumped and pushed around in her first two years is starting to push back.
"The biggest difference in me this year is aggressiveness," she said. "I'm more aggressive now than I was at the beginning of the season. There's so much contact going on, you have to be aggressive at the game progresses. My mentality now is that I can keep up with them inside. They bump you, you bump them back."
She's also taken on more of a leadership role, with the graduation of four-year inside force Ty'Reona Doucet and the incredibly bad luck of teammate Brandi Williams, who went down with a knee injury prior to the season and will miss a second straight year.
"I had to step up big-time," she said. "We have so many newcomers. We have freshmen, we have people coming in not playing the game the way we play it. I'm just trying to get everyone on the same page. I'm trying to be more vocal on the court, and my teammates laugh at me a lot because the louder I get, my voice gets squeakier."
Brodhead will put up with the squeaky voice.
"It's her openness to coaching that makes her special," he said. "She brings that work ethic, but more than that she pays attention to what we're saying. She listens and she absorbs. That's why she's a great student, because she can learn."
-- RaginCajuns.com --
