Sports blog information from USA TODAY.
2001 | 6’6 | 6’10 | 224 LBS Team: Arizona Agent: Aaron Turner Best aggregate mock draft rank : 44 / Worst rank: NR 2023-24 stats: In 2023-24, Johnson averaged 11.5 points, 5.9 rebounds, 1.8 assists, 0.7 blocks, and 1.0 steals per game. He shot 53.0 …
2001 | 6’6 | 6’10 | 224 LBS
Team: Arizona
Agent: Aaron Turner
Best aggregate mock draft rank: 44 / Worst rank: NR
2023-24 stats:
In 2023-24, Johnson averaged 11.5 points, 5.9 rebounds, 1.8 assists, 0.7 blocks, and 1.0 steals per game. He shot 53.0 percent from the field, 38.7 percent from three, and 71.0 percent from the foul line.
Keshad Johnson not picking USC? Not a big deal. Keshad Johnson going to Arizona and becoming a USC foe? That’s a big deal.
Keshad Johnson chose Arizona as his transfer destination on Saturday.
We wrote this about the big development in the Pac-12 college basketball transfer portal:
“Let’s be very clear here: USC was not going to get Keshad Johnson once D.J. Rodman came into the program. Johnson would not have been able to get extended playing time with Rodman right there. Andy Enfield landed Rodman and got the floor-stretching forward he needed. He did really well.
“The problem for USC is simply that Johnson landed on the Trojans’ foremost competitor for the 2024 Pac-12 title. That is the bad news here.”
Let’s get a glimpse of the national reaction to this important transfer portal development:
Johnson was a USC target, but when D.J. Rodman transferred to the Trojans, Johnson focused on Arizona and Kentucky. Zona won.
No one was expecting Keshad Johnson to transfer to USC on Saturday. The forward from San Diego State, who helped the Aztecs reach the 2023 NCAA Final Four and the national championship game, was a USC target, but when Washington State’s D.J. Rodman hit the portal and then transferred to USC, it was clear the Trojans had the forward they needed to round out their roster. Though USC was listed as one of five finalists for Johnson, no one was seriously considering USC as a possibility after the Rodman news broke.
Four other schools were contenders for Keshad Johnson in the transfer portal. On Saturday, we learned that coach Tommy Lloyd and the Arizona Wildcats won that battle. With UCLA viewed as the third-best team in the Pac-12 heading into the start of the 2023-2024 college basketball season, the news of Johnson going to Tucson is a blow for a USC team which hopes to beat the Wildcats for a conference championship. If USC can pull off the feat, it would be the Trojans’ first regular-season conference title in men’s college basketball since 1985.
Here’s more on the Keshad Johnson story:
