AUSTIN, Texas — The out-of-tune song can be heard from behind a closed door on the other side of Texas’ practice court: “Happy Birthday to Tre!” A few moments later, Longhorns superstar guard Tre Johnson ambles over for a pre-scheduled interview.
The SEC’s leading scorer is now 19 years old.
A smooth, create-a-bucket from anywhere true freshman, Johnson is averaging more points per game (20.2) than his age for a Texas team scrapping to stay in the bubble watch conversation for the NCAA Tournament.
As for how Johnson will celebrate the day before Texas’ regular-season finale against Oklahoma, he doesn’t really have any plans. Johnson’s not one for attention. Despite 45,000 Instagram followers, Johnson’s only posted twice this season — both to satisfy NIL obligations.
Said Johnson with a laugh when asked about his lack of social media usage: “I’m too busy in the real world.”
For whatever reason, however, the basketball gods do not take kindly to Johnson’s live-in-the-moment presence on his second day as a 19-year-old. Johnson peppered the rim in the 76-72 loss to the tune of 14 shots. He missed all of them (0-for-14), including a gimme layup in the final seconds on the way to a season-low seven points.
There’s more than a bit of irony in Johnson’s inexplicable cold streak.
Johnson carried Texas all season in his debut with the SEC’s fifth-highest usage rate for a veteran-led and injury-riddled roster. Yet Texas’ other scorers stepped up against Oklahoma as Jordan Pope (20), Tramon Mark (12) and Arthur Kaluma (12) reached double digits, the first time that high-profile transfer trio managed to do so together since Texas’ SEC opener against Texas A&M.
Johnson’s shot abandoning him at the worst time is just another twist in an uncomfortable SEC debut for the Longhorns (17-14, 6-12 in conference) and embattled head coach Rodney Terry.
Terry, just two seasons removed from an Elite Eight run, and Texas will enter Wednesday’s SEC Tournament matchup against Vanderbilt with an obvious directive: Win multiple games or miss the NCAA Tournament.
If they don’t, the Longhorns risk wasting their latest one-and-done standout.
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“It’s been kind of the same but not the same,” Johnson said of how his Texas career has gone thus far. “I thought we’d win more games or get it figured out sooner. But if we’ve got to figure it out right before the SEC Tournament that’s perfectly fine with me.
“I just thought we’d be better overall as a team with the wins and losses.”
Terry first watched Johnson play in 2021. He’d gone to a tournament in Dallas to scout Cason Wallace, now of the Oklahoma City Thunder, but couldn’t take his eyes off a bucket-getting high school sophomore.
Turns out that Terry had a connection with Johnson, too. Terry coached Johnson’s father, Richard, as an assistant for Baylor in 1996.
Richard eventually transferred to Midwestern State, but the pair reconnected when Richard’s son emerged as one of the top underclassmen in America.
“We called (Tre) a young Ray Allen when we first saw him play in high school, and to me he’s lived up to that,” Terry told Hoops HQ earlier this year.
By any metric Johnson, who finished as the No. 6 overall player in the 2024 class per the Top247 rankings, has emerged as one of the top bucket getters in the country. He is the highest-scoring freshman in the nation, averaging a scintillating 20.2 points per game, hitting 39.5% of his 3-point attempts (5th in the SEC), 43.4% of his field goals (10th in the SEC) and 88.3% of his free throws (3rd in the league).
That efficiency is despite leading the SEC — a league with five of the top 12 teams in the NCAA’s NET rankings — in minutes per game (34.2).
The 6-foot-6, 190-pound Johnson isn’t necessarily overwhelmingly athletic. He can create off the dribble and attack the rim, but much of Johnson’s scoring prowess comes from his ability to work off the ball and generate space off the dribble for his silky jumper.
Johnson worked with his dad from a young age on his release, resulting in a smooth, repeatable and lightning-fast jumper. That shot is the technically sound base for a scorer who prefers to attack defenders based on what they’re giving him. It’s the same tactic he took in high school, dropping 30-plus points on Wallace as a sophomore, and the same strategy used in SEC play.
“Whatever the defense gives me, I’m going to take,” Johnson said. “Just trying to be efficient, whatever I’m doing.”
There have been stretches this year, however, when Johnson’s been forced to hunt shots.
Texas retooled its roster this offseason after losing its top four scorers and eight of its top 10 leaders in minutes played to either the draft, transfer portal or graduation. The Longhorns went heavy in the portal to help replace those departures, landing a quintet of four-star transfers, including three of the top 70 (Mark, Pope and Kaluma).
All three of them averaged 14-plus points last season with Mark (Arkansas) and Pope (Oregon State) leading their team in points per game.
Thrown in Johnson’s high-profile pedigree and it looked like, at least on paper, the Longhorns would have no shortage of scoring options from night to night.
“That’s probably the biggest thing for me playing with older guys, especially with guys that were No. 1 options on their team,” Johnson said. “Whole lot of No. 1 options on the same team trying to find ways to get that blended and gelled together.”
But that four-headed scoring punch never materialized.
Injuries have caused a lot of alterations of Texas’ rotation from week to week, but generally it’s been on Johnson to manufacture points from night to night. The Longhorns are 0-5 in SEC play when Johnson scores 15 points or fewer and 1-7 when he shoots 40% or worse from the floor.
Despite some huge efforts from Johnson down the stretch, the Longhorns are just 2-7 over their last nine games. That tailspin turned up the heat on Terry. CBS Sports listed Terry’s seat as “uncomfortably hot” on Feb. 26, and the Longhorns have lost three of four since.
Johnson tries to stay off social media, but even he is aware of the talk surrounding his coach’s future heading into the SEC tournament.
“It’s weird because he hasn’t played a single game for us and they talking (about) him like he’s out there playing for us,” Johnson said. “But a lot of it is on us, though, our slow starts and things like that. When it’s a loss he takes the loss on him. It shows the coach he is.”
Texas isn’t Duke or Kentucky, but the Longhorns have had plenty of one-and-done darlings since the one-and-done era began with the 2006 NBA Draft.
From Mo Bamba to Myles Turner and Tristan Thompson, top recruits have become top draft picks in Austin. No player is more notable in that regard than Kevin Durant, the supernova of a freshman who won Naismith National Player of the Year in 2007.
Durant is a future Hall of Famer and one of the greatest pure scorers of all time. Johnson modeled his scoring repertoire after Durant growing up, though Johnson started watching those like Devin Booker, Shai-Gilgeous-Alexander and Bradley Beal more often later in life when he peaked at 6-foot-6 instead of 6-foot-11 like Durant.
Johnson even broke Durant’s freshman single-game scoring record with a 39-point outburst on Feb. 26 against Arkansas.
Not that Johnson remembers that night — an 86-81 overtime loss — all that fondly.
“It doesn’t matter,” Johnson said. “We lost the game. It’s just a scoring record.”
For all of Durant’s accomplishments as a true freshman in 2006-07, Texas lost in the second round of the NCAA Tournament to USC. He’s not alone in failing to make a run. Texas’ nine one-and-done true freshmen since 2007 have all failed to make the Sweet 16.
One-and-done freshmen have rarely won titles in college basketball, and it’s not as if every likely high pick will go dancing this March; Rutgers’ Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey — both projected top-five picks — will need to run the table, ala NC State, in the Big Ten Tournament to lead the Scarlet Knights to a tournament bid.
But for Texas it’s a continuation of a trend. The Longhorns have never lacked talent. Even when they get a once-in-a-half-decade player like Johnson, they’ve been unable to take advantage with a Sweet 16 run.
Johnson is yet to announce his 2025 NBA Draft plans, but Terry said back in November of his freshman star: “This kid is special. Don’t wait till conference, come out and see him. … Don’t wait till half a year and figure out you’re only going to see him for one year.”
On the day of his 19th birthday, Johnson reflected on what that experience would mean if it didn’t include a trip to the NCAA Tournament.
“(It’d just be) a step that I missed,” Johnson said. “A big step, because that’s what you really dream of as a kid is playing in the tournament on the big stage.”
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