Inside The Huskies

Koren Johnson Heads for Transfer Portal, Exits Coach-Less UW

The Husky guard became a highly marketable player after productive final month of the season.

Dan Raley

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The University of Washington basketball program didn't make it more than 48 hours before fallout appeared from coach Mike Hopkins' firing — sophomore guard Koren Johnson has entered the transfer portal, according to On3sports.

Yet chances are Johnson would be looking around for another place to land regardless of who was heading up the Huskies.

His meteoric rise over the final month of the season, where he averaged 18.7 points per game and shot 50 percent from both the field and behind the 3-point line, made him a highly marketable player. The Pac-12 rewarded him with Sixth Man of the Year honors.

On Friday, the 6-foot-2 Johnson became the latest young backcourt player with plenty of promise to flee the UW in recent seasons, following RaeQuan Battle (Montana, West Virginia), Marcus Tsohonis (Virginia Commonwealth, Long Beach State) and Keyon Menifield (Arkansas) out the door in Montlake.

Johnson appeared in 29 games as a freshman and averaged 6.8 points per game while making steady progress.

In the recently completed season, he started the opener against Bellarmine and scored a career-high 25 points, then settled into a reserve role. Hopkins sometimes sat him down for long stretches when he became inconsistent. Johnson similarly injured a shoulder that set him back, too. 

However, in mid-February, Johnson came off the bench and scored a new career-best 30 points in an 85-65 victory over Stanford at Alaska Airlines Arena and he was on an eight-game tear.

Hopkins, who was fired last Friday, still wouldn't put Johnson in the starting lineup  until the final game of the regular season and then to open the Pac-12 Tournament. He finished with an 11.1 scoring average. He seemed restless as things wound down.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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