Midway through the second quarter on Sunday afternoon in Columbia, Raven Johnson sprung a trap. Matched up against Cotie McMahon in the corner, Johnson watched and waited while Ole Miss ran a pick-and-roll up top. Then, just as Kaitlin Peterson picked up her dribble and turned to throw the ball out to McMahon, Johson jumped into the passing lane for a steal and took the ball coast-to-coast for a layup.
Johnson’s bucket put South Carolina ahead by 11, and the Gamecocks led by double digits the rest of the way en route to a dominant 85-48 win that secured the SEC regular season title for the fifth season in a row. Though Johnson only finished with six points in the victory — tied for the fifth-highest total for the Gamecocks — she showed why she deserves to be a first-round pick in the 2026 WNBA Draft.
Johnson’s WNBA stock has fluctuated throughout her time in college. She helped the Gamecocks win the national championship as a redshirt junior in 2024, and drew rave reviews for her defense against Caitlin Clark in the title game. However, she was unable to build on that momentum last season, and after a disappointing campaign on a personal level, she decided to use her extra year of eligibility to return to school rather than turn pro.
That proved to be a wise decision. Johnson has bounced back with the best season of her career: 9.8 points, 4.2 rebounds, 5.4 assists and 1.7 steals on 48.7/35.2/84.1 shooting splits. Those aren’t gaudy numbers, and Johnson can still be inconsistent as a scorer, as we saw Sunday, but it’s everything else that’s going to make her a first-round pick.
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Jack Maloney
“I think that Raven Johnson does not get the credit that she should. I think she is the best point guard in the country,” Ole Miss coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin said Sunday after Johnson’s excellent two-way performance, which included seven assists, three steals and just one turnover.
Shutting down McMahon
Johnson is best known for her defense, so let’s start on that side of the ball.
She spent most of Sunday shadowing McMahon, Ole Miss’s leading scorer and another potential first-round pick in this year’s WNBA draft. McMahon entered the game averaging 20.7 points, and was coming off 39- and 25-point performances. Her hot streak came to an abrupt end
Johnson helped hold McMahon to a season-low two points on 0 of 9 from the field. This was just the second time in McMahon’s career that she’s played at least 10 minutes and failed to make a shot, and her two points were tied for the third-fewest in her career.
Johnson is only 5-foot-9, but she has a 6-foot-2 wingspan, which is a real benefit against bigger players like the 6-foot McMahon. Throughout the game, Johnson got right into McMahon’s space and prevented her from getting anything going off the dribble.
Here, early in the third quarter, Johnson picks McMahon up fullcourt and forces her to give up the ball early. Because McMahon is only just inside the halfcourt line, her pass to the wing is longer than usual, which gives Ta’Niya Latson time to pick it off. Johnson doesn’t get any credit for this turnover in the box score, but she caused it.
A few possessions later, McMahon doesn’t even try to bring the ball up the floor and throws it ahead instead. She gets it back near the top of the key, but Johnson’s pressure immediately forces her backwards, and then Johnson pokes the ball away for what should have been another turnover.
“I thought our players did a great job, Raven especially,” South Carolina coach Dawn Staley said of her team’s job defending McMahon. “The first line of that defense was so hard, that took her vision down, that occupied her dribble. Raven’s the very best at it.”
Johnson’s ability to mirror McMahon’s movements and weave around screens also made it difficult for Ole Miss to get McMahon going off the ball. Here, in the second quarter, Johnson fights through traffic to get a deflection on a baseline out of bounds play and forces Ole Miss to take the ball out again in the deep corner.
There is no better point of attack defender in this class than Johnson, and as the WNBA leans more into spacing and 3-point shooting over the coming years, that is going to become an even more valuable skill.
“Unafraid of a challenge, is willing — she knows. Like, she knew she was gonna have to guard Cotie, she knew she was gonna have to guard Mikayla Blakes. She knows she’s gonna have to guard our opponents’ best perimeter [players], and sometimes small, power forwards,” Staley said of Johnson’s defensive impact. “We’re unafraid to switch if need be because we know Raven’s gonna give it her best shot at defending and making it difficult for people. I see it. I don’t think she gets credit enough for what she’s been doing over her career… She doesn’t have the numbers and the steals and the blocks that we look at… If you really look at what makes our team go defensively, it starts and ends with Raven.”
An improved playmaker
Johnson’s perimeter defense has never been a secret, but there have been questions about her offense. Though she is shooting a career-high 35.2% from 3-point range (on just 2.4 attempts per game), she still offers little as a scorer. Johnson has made real strides as a playmaker, though, and now looks much more like a viable point guard at the next level.
She finished with seven assists against Ole Miss and easily could have been in double figures in that category if her teammates had helped her out.
Johnson excels in transition, as we saw time and again Sunday. The weight of her passes were excellent and allowed her bigs to catch the ball in stride to either go up and finish or get fouled. This one in the third quarter to Alicia Tournebize stood out.
She also showed that she could make high-level passes in the halfcourt, such as this backdoor feed to Tessa Johnson (which should have been converted) and this pocket pass to Madina Okot.
Additionally, Johnson only had one turnover on Sunday. She’s averaging 1.6 this season and for her career has just 196 turnovers in 3,485 minutes over 143 games. One of the most impressive stats about Johnson’s ability to take care of the ball is that she has 42 games without a turnover, and she played 20-plus minutes in 26 of those contests.
Would WNBA teams like to see more from Johnson offensively? Sure. In particular, can she become even more consistent from behind the arc to command attention when she doesn’t have the ball? But in an expanding league that’s already lacking point guard depth, Johnson’s ability to run an offense without making mistakes — combined with her elite defense — is going to be attractive to teams.
“Raven Johnson is a winner,” Staley said after South Carolina defeated LSU earlier this month. “Like, look it up in the dictionary, look it up on your iPhones, Raven Johnson is a winner. She makes plays. Winning plays… She’s probably the one that I’ll miss the most out of all the players that I’ve coached.”
Jack Maloney
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