Raven Johnson’s college career will end where it started, with a national title on the line

PHOENIX — Raven Johnson was a bright-eyed freshman when South Carolina won the national championship in 2022. While veterans Aliyah Boston and Zia Cooke had competed on the big stage, Johnson had no grasp of the magnitude of the moment.

“I was looking at it as a trip, a little vacation trip,” Johnson said Saturday. “I’d seen the first gift like, ‘This is what we get in a Final Four? I need to start coming back here more.’ I wasn’t thinking about basketball. I was thinking about vacation.”

Johnson’s perspective has changed in the past four years, now that she’s the veteran on a Gamecocks team going for its third national title in five seasons. South Carolina will face UCLA on Sunday for the championship.

“Now I think of it as a business trip,” Johnson said. “I’m used to being here. You’ve got to lock in. You’ve got to buy into the process. And I’m trying to instill that to the younger girls who are here: Enjoy the moment while you’re here, because moments like this don’t happen forever.”

It seems like they do for Johnson.

She’s never missed a Final Four in her five-year career, though she was sidelined most of 2022 after tearing her ACL two games into the season. She was a key part of South Carolina’s undefeated title run in 2024, when the Gamecocks topped Caitlin Clark and Iowa in the championship game.

Known for her stifling defense, Johnson has become more of a two-way player. She averaged 10 points per game, her first time as a double-digit scorer, and was named the Southeastern Conference defensive player of the year before leading the Gamecocks to their sixth straight national semifinal.

She’s grown accustomed to guarding the opponent’s best player, like when she was asked to match up with AP Player of the Year Sarah Strong on Friday. The 5-foot-8 Johnson didn’t concede many shots against Strong, who’s 6-2.

“She’s a really good player,” Johnson said of the UConn star, who shot just 4 of 16 on Friday. “I was just trying to fight aggression with aggression. If she pushed me, I was going to push back. I wasn’t going to back down. I’m not scared of nobody.”

South Carolina coach Dawn Staley has always praised Johnson’s ability to thrive with any defensive matchup, but what stands out to her about the veteran has been her leadership arc.

The night before the national semifinal against UConn, Staley wanted to know if the team needed one last video session to prepare. She let Johnson decide, and the senior concluded that more study time was necessary.

It evidently paid off, as the Gamecocks smothered UConn in a physical matchup, holding the Huskies to their worst shooting performance of the season — 19 for 61 from the field.

“Her leadership has grown from doing it by example to now verbalizing and still doing it by example,” Staley said. “That’s winning behavior. Raven during this time only wants to hear and see things that are only going to help us. If she hears something or sees something that doesn’t fit that, she addresses it.”

Johnson has embraced that role, though sometimes she’s still shocked at how impactful her words can be.

“I didn’t even think they were going to listen to me,” she said. “I’m a jokey person. When I’m not on the court, I’m always joking. But they do listen to me even when I’m joking. They watch my every move also, even on the court. It doesn’t matter, they just watch me. I think I’m trying to instill pro habits into them, like Aliyah Boston instilled pro habits into me.”

Her personality was on display on Friday, when Staley and Geno Auriemma got into a heated exchange in the closing seconds over a pregame handshake.

Johnson said she noticed her coach was upset and wanted to make sure she was OK. In the middle of the melee, Johnson reached out to Staley for a high-five.

“It’s just so classic Raven, really classic Raven,” Staley said. “I mean, she makes me laugh even in the most difficult situations because she’s so innocent. Like she really is a really kind-hearted young lady. Sometimes you need people around you to put things in perspective.

“It truly was a calming for her to do that. Just to break the ice of what was happening in real time.”

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