Basketball Rookie Receives Awards

Keith Berry

First-year point guard Adrian Robbie Johnson was the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference's Freshman of the Year as well as the Great Lakes region Freshman of the Year, an honor issued by D3 Hoops organization. The first-year guard had an astounding 2015–2016 season.  According to muspartans.com, Johnson tied the program's first-year scoring record with 473 points, the most for a first-year player since the 1978–79 campaign, almost 40 years ago.

As soon as he scored his first basket, Johnson looked like he would be a problem for the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference because of his impressive game. He led the Spartans in scoring with an average of 18.2 points a game and was ranked third in HCAC play. Throughout the regular season, Johnson tacked on several games of 30 points or more. He also led the team in steals with 50, leading the category in HCAC play. According to muspartans.com, Johnson wound up sixth in assists among HCAC leaders with an average of 3.7 per game.

“I am just happy that my parents are proud of me and that I can rep Indianapolis in a big way,” Johnson said. “To me this just means that I had a really good freshman year and I have to continue my sophomore year and so on.”

Johnson, a quiet kid who likes to hang out with his friends when not spending time in the gym, has been playing basketball since he was two years old in his local Community Center. As his parents got him more involved, the Indianapolis native took more interest in the game around the second grade.

During the preseason, Johnson didn’t really have different goals from what a typical first-year player would. “My expectations for the beginning of the year were to just do the best I could,” Johnson said. “I just wanted to help the team win games and do everything Coach Good and Coach Wood said.”

Looking forward to next year, Johnson talked about how he felt about losing key players such as seniors Matt Brown and Brady Dolezal. “With losing key players, it basically makes everyone’s role on the team bigger and more important,” he said. “We just all need to step up and accept the challenge among all the others we [Spartans] face.”

Johnson plans on winning a Player of the Year award for the next three years. However his main focus is on securing at least one conference championship during his career at Manchester University. “We need that ring,” Johnson said.