Omari Johnson happy to have mask off this year

By Cliff Kirkpatrick

Gazette-Times Reporter

Looking at Omari Johnson this season compared to last is like seeing the before-and-after shots of a makeover.

The most noticeable change in the sophomore forward for the Oregon State men's basketball team is his face. Gone is the protective mask that hampered his play a season ago.

Wearing the shield was a protective necessity for him to step on the court last season as he recovered from a fractured cheekbone.

"The bone is healed up pretty nicely, so no more mask," Johnson said. "I hated the mask. I couldn't breath. The tip would crimp my nose so it was hard to breath through my nose. The sweat would run into my eyes and it would get all foggy. I couldn't see in the peripheral."

Johnson was injured when he was wrestling playfully with teammate Calvin Hampton in the locker room before last season began and caught an elbow in the right cheek. The injury kept Johnson out of the first eight games.

"I felt so bad about that," Hampton said. "Why do I keep hurting Omari? And Omari is one of my favorite players. It's crazy that I'm the reason he's always hurt."

More on that later.

Johnson went on to play in 23 games, and start 16, with an average of 7.3 points and 4.3 rebounds a game. He laid the groundwork of a solid career with the Beavers after the false start.

It wasn't easy. Every time he came out of the game he took his shield off to clean it. As soon as he got in a groove, he had to stop to fix the mask.

"It affected me, but I tried not to let it affect me too much," Johnson said.

Johnson wasn't concerned about comfort at the time, he just wanted to play instead of sitting out and using a redshirt season. The standout from Los Angeles wanted to help the struggling team any way he could.

Then the mask idea came up.

"I didn't care at the time," Johnson. "I'd wear a glove over my head to come back and play. I thought I was going to be out the whole year. I thought they were going to redshirt me, but I really believed I could come back that year. And when they said I could, I was jumping for joy."

Johnson learned what it took to play at the Pacific-10 Conference level. It was tough dealing with others who jumped as high or higher for rebounds, and he found out how hard he had to fight for the loose balls.

Bulking up in the offseason to compensate was the plan, but the strength staff saw that it slowed him down. He changed his workout routine to help him gain strength without putting on weight.

Now he is a lean 205 pounds.

His new frame and desire to be more involved in the team has helped Johnson adapt to first-year coach Craig Robinson's motion offense. He was the team's most productive player in the two exhibition games, scoring 18 and 14 points.

"He's one of our better outside shooters, one of our better post-up guys and rebounders," Robinson said. "And he's 6-9. That's a big thing."

Big things are expected of Johnson this season, but he missed the season-opening loss at Howard last week. He rolled his ankle in a practice and Hampton landed on it to make it worse.

If Johnson had been available, the Beavers most likely would have won a game they lost by two points.

"I felt so bad the whole trip," Hampton said. "I knew if Omari played that game the outcome would have been better. It would have been a more productive game. Omari brings a lot of intangibles to the table a lot of the guys don't. He can do things we need to get a win."

So his season begins late again because of Hampton, but only one game this time. The Beavers play their second game of the season Saturday night at Nevada.

Johnson hopes to continue to his development and inject life into the team so it snaps its 22-game losing streak. How he plays may make a difference in how the Beavers are viewed in the early stages of their rebuilding project.

"When you lose that many games, it wasn't a good first year," Johnson said. "But I had a lot of learning experiences, and learning how to deal with adversity. We stuck together, even when we were losing games. We're still best of friends. We don't want to get rid of last year. We want to use that as motivation to get better this year. We don't want to feel like we felt last year."