The 2023-24 season — Bryce Johnson’s first with UMBC men’s basketball — was a series of ebbs outnumbering the flows. Shortly after transferring from Chicago State, he broke a bone in his right foot and then suffered a concussion in the preseason.
Johnson then suffered another concussion in an 85-80 win against Sacred Heart on Nov. 17, 2023, had to get his scalp stitched up, and sat out two games. Then 13 days after dropping a then-career-high 31 points in an 87-85 loss to American on Dec. 29, he tore the MCL in his right knee in a 77-72 loss at Vermont on Jan. 11 and missed 13 more games.
This winter has been dramatically different for Johnson, a resident of Orlando, Florida. The 6-foot-4, 190-pound senior shooting guard leads the Retrievers (9-10, 1-3 America East) in scoring at 17.3 points per game — which ranks third in the conference — and needs just 20 more points to reach the 1,000-point milestone.
“It’s definitely overwhelming,” he said. “Sometimes it’s like, man, all the stuff I’ve been through to now, it’s just amazing. My coaches believe in me, my teammates believe in me. So it’s all great here.”
At the age of 22, Johnson has already endured enough sorrow to last a lifetime. He almost died of an infection when he was 13, lost a baby brother, a grandmother and a close friend, and has watched his parents battle health problems.
Tanya Tate, Johnson’s mother, said those hurdles only made her son stronger.
“He’s definitely grown into a man from it,” she said. “He’s figured out ways on how to cope with things and figure out things. Everything happens for a reason, and as much as we don’t like to admit some of those things when they happen and we don’t understand why, he’s overcome all of those challenges, and I really think he’s become a better person.”
Tragedy struck even before Johnson was born. Before the birth of older sister, Tiawna, who is a year older than Bryce, their father BJ Johnson was diagnosed with end-stage renal failure with only 7% kidney function left between both kidneys. Before Bryce’s younger sister Briawna was born, BJ Johnson, who played defensive end at Cal State Northridge, underwent surgery for a kidney transplant and is awaiting another kidney.
Tate, who divorced her husband and married Bennie Tate in 2009, lost a baby boy named Eleven Elijah Tate on March 21, 2010, to a chorioamnionitis infection. The couple later welcomed a boy named Benjamin, who is now 13.
When Bryce Johnson was 13, he and the family went swimming at a beach on the west coast of Florida. But he complained of feeling itchy, and the family left early.
A few days later, a mass on Johnson’s neck, a high fever and lesions on his skin prompted Tate to take her son to an area hospital where he briefly lost the ability to walk and couldn’t keep any food down. Doctors were puzzled, and Johnson was given a 12% chance to survive until Tate did some online research and found that her son’s case mirrored those who had been diagnosed with Vibrio vulnificus, a bacterial infection of the bloodstream that can be fatal if untreated.
Tate, who is vice president of sales for Mid-Florida Pathology, convinced doctors to administer gram-negative medications, which worked. But she called the two-week ordeal “one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever been through.”
“I think the point when it really took a toll on me was when I saw where his bones looked like they were bending almost [from X-rays], and he had to be pushed in a wheelchair, and his eyes were sinking in,” she said. “You could just see that it wasn’t Bryce anymore, and you get in mom mode, and you almost feel helpless at that point in time where you don’t know what to do.”
Johnson recalled feeling confused. “It really got to a point where I almost gave up,” he said. “But I thank God every day for my Mama. She really got me through that situation, and her being there for me every day definitely made it better.”
In 2020, Johnson’s paternal grandmother, Karen Richards, died in 2020 of colon cancer. But because of the coronavirus pandemic, the family was not permitted to see her in the final days.
His grandmother’s death hit Johnson hard. “Growing up, when my parents couldn’t afford to send me to camp and stuff like that, she would be the one to say, ‘Here, go to this camp, do all this,’” he said. “She was really one of my biggest fans. So when she passed, that was definitely a tough thing to go through.”
The following year, Johnson lost a close friend, Ayah Fadhli, in a car accident. And while he was trying to recover from his own knee injury last winter, Tate discovered a mass in her breast and some pelvic and colon issues that required her to undergo several procedures and treatment.
Tate said she remembered frequent phone conversations with her son revolving around one refrain.
“I remember him saying, ‘Mom, I want to come home,’” she said. “[I said,] ‘You can’t come home. I’m good.’ I had everything taken care of, and everything was fine. [School] was his priority. ‘Take care of yourself, your future, your grades, your basketball. Stay in the gym and do everything you need to do.’”
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Johnson acknowledged the difficulty of staying at UMBC. But he was driven by a singular thought.
“The easy thing would have been just to give up while all that stuff was going on and just walk away and stuff like that,” he said. “But all of those people and all the people around me, they love me the most, and they would want me to just keep pushing, keep going. So I just used all that stuff as motivation to keep going, go hard, and do it for them.”
Johnson doesn’t reveal much about his personal battles, according to Retrievers coach Jim Ferry. The guard instead has committed himself to becoming more than a standstill 3-point shooter and dunker as he was at Chicago State.
“He’s playing with such confidence right now,” Ferry said. “He’s a very unique player in his ability to get to places and score at three different levels. I think he’s blossomed into an All-League player that maybe some people didn’t realize because he wasn’t around for all of last year. He’s gotten better defensively, he’s gotten better rebounding-wise, and I think he’s just really blossomed at the right time for our program.”
Johnson, who is majoring in media and communications, said he plans to play professionally — either here or overseas. For Tate, who watched her son get cut from his sixth- and seventh-grade basketball teams, reaching this stage has been a blessing.
“There’s so much in Bryce’s bag that people haven’t seen yet, and it’s now really starting to shine through, and everybody’s able to see how truly talented he is,” she said. “It just makes my heart happy. It makes me smile, it makes me giddy.”
Have a news tip? Contact Edward Lee at [email protected], 410-332-6200 and x.com/EdwardLeeSun.
