Keyontae Johnson’s scary collapse interrupted a brilliant career

Johnson was on track to have one of the top seasons of any player in the country this year before his health scare jeopardized his career.

Name: Keyontae Johnson

Number: 11

Position: Forward

Class: Junior

Height: 6’5″

Weight: 229 lbs

Hometown: Norfolk, Va.

High School: Oak Hill Academy

Twitter: @Keyontae

2020 statistics:

GP FG% REB AST PTS
4 64.1 4.5 1.3 16

Overview:

Johnson was a four-star recruit in the 2018 recruiting class, and he saw immediate action as a freshman. He played in 36 games (starting 20 of them), totaling four double-doubles on the year (including three in postseason play. He finished the year averaging 8.1 points and 6.4 rebounds, and he entered his sophomore season with high expectations.

Johnson lived up to those expectations in 2019-20, and then some. He led the team in scoring with 14 points per game and he also averaged 7.1 rebounds. He had eight double-doubles (which, conveniently, doubled his total from the prior year). Johnson finished second on the team in rebounding and first in steals with 38. For his efforts, he was named to the coaches First Team All-SEC and the AP Second Team All-SEC.

The season was canceled before Florida’s first SEC Tournament game due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but Johnson entered his junior year as the preseason SEC Player of the Year. Through the first four games, he appeared to be on track, scoring double figures in three of them with a high of 24 against Boston College.

However, early in UF’s fourth game against FSU, Johnson collapsed and had to be taken off the court and to a hospital, where he was listed in critical but stable condition. He has since started to recover, and he closed out the season in a new role as “Coach Key” on the sidelines. Florida hasn’t made his diagnosis public, but it did say its experts don’t believe the collapse to have been related to his previous diagnosis with COVID-19.

Now, his future is a bit in question. If he is medically cleared to play in 2021-22 and chooses to return to Florida, he will be surrounded by a lot of new faces after a mass transfer exodus. But if he comes back to the court, it will be huge for UF next season.

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