Phillip Lane Johnson (born June 4, 1958) is an American

college basketball In United States colleges, top-tier basketball is governed by collegiate athletic bodies including National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), the United States Collegiate Athleti ...

coach. He was the interim men's head

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

coach at the

University of Texas at El Paso The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) is a public research university in El Paso, Texas. It is a member of the University of Texas System. UTEP is the second-largest university in the United States to have a majority Mexican American stud ...

(UTEP).

Early life and college career

After graduating from

Putnam City High School Putnam City High School (commonly, PC, Putnam City Original, and PCO) is a secondary school located in Warr Acres, Oklahoma, a northwestern suburb of metropolitan Oklahoma City, U.S.. It is one of three high schools in the Putnam City School Distr ...

Warr Acres, Oklahoma Warr Acres is a city in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, United States, and a part of the Oklahoma City metropolitan area. It was established after World War II by C.B. Warr, a dynamic businessman, builder, and commercial developer. The population was 1 ...

in 1976, Johnson attended East Central Oklahoma State University. At East Central Oklahoma State, Johnson was basketball co-captain in his senior season. Johnson graduated from East Central Oklahoma with a B.A. in education in 1981. He then earned an M.A. from

Henderson State University Henderson State University (HSU) is a public university in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. Founded in 1890 as Arkadelphia Methodist College, it is Arkansas's only member of the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges. Henderson has an undergraduate enrol ...

in 1982.

Coaching career

Assistant coach and junior college head coach

After earning his master's degree, Johnson began his coaching career in 1982 at East Central Oklahoma State and coached there for three seasons. In 1985, Johnson worked his first head coaching position at Northern Oklahoma Junior College and coached there for two seasons. In 1987, Johnson became head coach at Seminole Junior College, also in Oklahoma. In his three seasons coaching Seminole, Johnson led Seminole to the 1988 state championship and 1989

Bi-State Conference The Bi-State Conference, also known as Region II, is a junior college athletic conference for many technical and community colleges within the South Central states of Arkansas and Oklahoma, sponsored by the National Junior College Athletic Assoc ...

championship. Johnson moved to the NCAA ranks in the 1990–91 season as an assistant under

J. D. Barnett Joseph Donald Barnett (born January 10, 1944) is an American retired college basketball coach. He was a former head basketball coach at several NCAA Division I, Division I institutions, the most high-profile being VCU Rams men's basketball, Virgini ...

Tulsa Tulsa () is the second-largest city in the U.S. state, state of Oklahoma and List of United States cities by population, 47th-most populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. ...

. The following season, Johnson began what would be several stints as an assistant coach under

Tim Floyd Tim Floyd (born February 25, 1954) is a former American college basketball coach, most recently the head coach at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). He was formerly the head coach of several teams in the NCAA and the NBA. Floyd is also kn ...

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans
Merriam-Webster. ; french: La Nouvelle-Orléans , es, Nuev ...

. In Johnson's second season as assistant, New Orleans qualified for the 1993 NCAA tournament and finished the season ranked #17 in the

AP Poll The Associated Press poll (AP poll) provides weekly rankings of the top 25 NCAA teams in one of three Division I college sports: football, men's basketball and women's basketball. The rankings are compiled by polling 62 sportswriters and broadca ...

and first in the

Sun Belt Conference The Sun Belt Conference (SBC) is a collegiate athletic conference that has been affiliated with the NCAA's Division I since 1976. Originally a non-football conference, the Sun Belt began sponsoring football in 2001. Its football teams participa ...

. Johnson then became an assistant at

Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...

under

Lute Olson Robert Luther "Lute" Olson (September 22, 1934 – August 27, 2020) was an American basketball coach, who was inducted into both the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame. He was the head co ...

for five seasons from 1993 to 1998, including the 1997 national championship team. In every season with Johnson as assistant, Arizona was ranked in the year-end AP Polls.

First stint at San Jose State

In 1998, Johnson began one of two stints as

San Jose State San José State University (San Jose State or SJSU) is a public university in San Jose, California. Established in 1857, SJSU is the oldest public university on the West Coast and the founding campus of the California State University (CSU) sy ...

head coach. San Jose State improved from 3–23 in the 1997–98 season to 12–16 in the 1998–99 season, including wins over

Jerry Tarkanian Jerry Tarkanian (August 8, 1930 – February 11, 2015) was an American basketball coach. He coached college basketball for 31 seasons over five decades at three schools. He spent the majority of his career coaching with the UNLV Runnin' Rebe ...

Fresno State California State University, Fresno (Fresno State) is a public university in Fresno, California. It is one of 23 campuses in the California State University system. The university had a fall 2020 enrollment of 25,341 students. It offers bachelo ...

and

Don Haskins Donald Lee Haskins (March 14, 1930 – September 7, 2008), nicknamed "The Bear", was an American basketball player and coach. He played college basketball for three years under coach Henry Iba at Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State University). He w ...

UTEP The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) is a public research university in El Paso, Texas. It is a member of the University of Texas System. UTEP is the second-largest university in the United States to have a majority Mexican American stude ...

Chicago Bulls assistant

In his first professional coaching position, Johnson was an assistant coach for the

Chicago Bulls The Chicago Bulls are an American professional basketball team based in Chicago. The Bulls compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Eastern Conference Central Division. The team was founded on January 1 ...

from 1999 to 2002, again under Tim Floyd; Johnson remained on staff under

Bill Cartwright James William Cartwright (born July 30, 1957) is an American former professional basketball player and a former head coach of the Chicago Bulls of the National Basketball Association (NBA). A 7'1" (2.16 m) center, he played 16 seasons for the N ...

, after Floyd resigned in December 2001 following a 4–21 start.

Second stint at San Jose State

In 2002, Johnson returned to San Jose State to be head coach. San Jose State went 7–21 in the 2002–03 season, then 6–23 the following season. On February 25, 2004, San Jose State and the

Western Athletic Conference The Western Athletic Conference (WAC) is an NCAA Division I conference. The WAC covers a broad expanse of the western United States with member institutions located in Arizona, California, New Mexico, Utah, Washington (state), Washington, and Texa ...

both reprimanded Johnson for what San Jose State described as a "verbal confrontation with a UTEP fan" during the February 19 game against UTEP. This was six years before Johnson became an assistant coach at UTEP. San Jose State athletic director Chuck Bell stated: "While recognizing that the fan's verbal harassment of Coach Johnson throughout the game led to the confrontation, under no circumstances can a coach allow himself to be placed in a situation that jeopardizes the safety of the players and the fans in an arena." The same day of the reprimand, the ''

San Jose Mercury News ''The Mercury News'' (formerly ''San Jose Mercury News'', often locally known as ''The Merc'') is a morning daily newspaper published in San Jose, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is published by the Bay Area News Group, a subsidiar ...

'' revealed that Johnson had a suspended driver's license due to three arrests for drunk driving from 2002 and 2003. San Jose State fired Johnson after the 2004–05 season, in which San Jose State finished 6–23 for the second straight season. In 2008, the NCAA reduced the number of scholarships for San Jose State men's basketball by two, as a result of an unsatisfactory four-year

Academic Progress Rate The Academic Progress Rate (APR) is a measure introduced by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the nonprofit association that organizes the athletic programs of many colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, to tr ...

of 886 (the minimum satisfactory APR is 925) that spanned Johnson's final two seasons (2003–04 and 2004–05) and the first two seasons of succeeding head coach

George Nessman George Raymond Nessman II (born March 22, 1959) is an American athletic administrator and former college basketball coach who is the current athletic director at Justin-Siena High School. Nessman coached at the high school and community college ...

(2005–06 and 2006–07).

Assistant at USC and UTEP

From 2005 to 2010, Johnson was an assistant coach at

USC USC most often refers to: * University of South Carolina, a public research university ** University of South Carolina System, the main university and its satellite campuses **South Carolina Gamecocks, the school athletic program * University of ...

under Tim Floyd. For his first four seasons at USC, Johnson served under Tim Floyd, and Johnson remained on staff in the 2009–10 season under Kevin O'Neill. Johnson helped USC make the

2007 File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister of Pakistan, Pr ...

2008 File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...

, and

2009 File:2009 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The vertical stabilizer of Air France Flight 447 is pulled out from the Atlantic Ocean; Barack Obama becomes the first African American to become President of the United States; 2009 Iran ...

NCAA Tournaments and the 2009 Pac-10 tournament. However, in 2010, the NCAA vacated all of USC's wins from the 2007–08 season. For the fourth time, Johnson became an assistant coach on Tim Floyd's staff in 2010, with

. UTEP made the

2011 National Invitation Tournament The 2011 National Invitation Tournament was a single-elimination tournament of 32 NCAA Division I teams that were not selected to participate in the 2011 NCAA tournament. The 74th annual tournament began March 15 on campus sites ended on March ...

and

2014 College Basketball Invitational The 2014 College Basketball Invitational (CBI) was a single-elimination tournament of 16 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I teams that did not participate in the NCAA Tournament or the NIT. The opening games were held ...

in Johnson's time at UTEP. On February 24, 2011, Johnson was ejected from UTEP's game at

East Carolina East Carolina University (ECU) is a public research university in Greenville, North Carolina. It is the fourth largest university in North Carolina. Founded on March 8, 1907, as a teacher training school, East Carolina has grown from its orig ...

for receiving two

technical foul In basketball, a technical foul (colloquially known as a "T" or a "tech") is any infraction of the rules penalized as a foul which does not involve physical contact during the course of play between opposing players on the court, or is a foul by a ...

s. On January 30, 2015, C-USA issued a reprimand to Johnson for throwing a piece of paper on the court during UTEP's game against

Marshall Marshall may refer to: Places Australia * Marshall, Victoria, a suburb of Geelong, Victoria Canada * Marshall, Saskatchewan * The Marshall, a mountain in British Columbia Liberia * Marshall, Liberia Marshall Islands * Marshall Islands, an i ...

. Johnson served as interim head coach for the February 28, 2015 game at

Southern Miss The University of Southern Mississippi (Southern Miss or USM) is a public research university with its main campus located in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. It is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to award bachelor's, ma ...

because regular head coach Tim Floyd was suspended for violating league conduct policy. UTEP lost, 63-60. However, Floyd was still credited for the win.

Interim head coach at UTEP

On November 28, 2017, Johnson was named interim head coach of the Miners following Floyd's abrupt retirement.

Head coaching record

References