While being welcomed back to Denver University for his second stint as women’s basketball head coach at a news conference last month, Erik Johnson apologized to his former players in the audience.
He jokingly referred to those players, who helped generate 72 victories in four straight winning seasons through 2011-12, as his “test dummies.” Johnson said he’s smarter now and has priorities in order.
“Especially when you’re a young coach, you’re so excited and ready to kind of prove yourself,” Johnson said recently. “The older we get the more we realize it’s really not about us as a coach. It’s about the players and how can we figure out ways to help them be their best versions.
"Over the years I’ve become much more centered on the student-athlete experience, how I can be of service to them, rather than my magical system and all my fancy plays.”
Johnson has always been that coach who puts his players first, says Brianna Culberson, who went through two major crises before averaging 14.3 points and 7.0 rebounds as a senior forward on the 2010-11 team that went 19-12.
Culberson was entering her redshirt sophomore season after tearing her ACL when Johnson was hired. She felt anxiety and uncertainty, but her new coach responded perfectly. “He showed a lot of patience but also pushed me past that fear that comes along with it, which was great,” she recalled.
Unfortunately, a more severe incident in Culberson’s life arrived that same year when her father, Larry, suffered an accident at work where he stopped breathing long enough that he lost the ability to speak or the use of his arms and legs. It was a tragedy most 21-year-olds don’t experience, but Johnson sent Culberson home to Missouri to be with her family.
“It was a pretty impactful time in the way he showed up in that space,” Culberson said of Johnson. “It was a very hard time for myself and my family. He made sure I had the resources I needed when I came back to play.
“Even then, he was still coaching me. It wasn’t like he was walking on pins and needles. He was kind about it but he was still pushing me because he wanted me to be successful and continue to grow. That year was very influential for me not as just a person but also within my collegiate career.”
In this full-circle moment for Johnson, the circumstances are eerily similar. Denver was 11-19 the season before he came on as coach in 2008-09, and the Pioneers had the same win-loss record this past season.
Now 54, Johnson is re-energized to serve as a head coach. He returns to DU after four remarkable seasons as lead assistant to coach Carly Thibault-Dudonis at Fairfield. The Stags were 102-27 over those four seasons, won three Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference titles and advanced to three NCAA Tournaments.
Thibault, just 30 years old when she took over the Fairfield program, hired Johnson to provide her an experienced voice. He brought grace, human dignity and integrity, Thibault said, and became “my moral compass.”
Thibault has no doubt Johnson will push the right buttons as Denver enters its first season in the West Coast Conference. “He’s going to crush it,” she said. “Anything he touches, he finds so much success. I think those that are really grounded and rooted in being a great human and doing things the right way are going to have consistent, sustained success.”
Johnson left Denver the first time for what seemed like a bigger and better opportunity as head coach at Boston College. It didn’t work out that way and after six seasons, Johnson was dismissed as the Eagles’ coach. He went on to work with the Positive Coaching Alliance, while also coaching his daughter’s AAU summer team.
When Thibault first called to offer Johnson a position on her staff, he said no. He and Laura — his wife of 27 years and a former national volleyball player of the year at Ohio State — and daughters Daly and Avery, had a good life. It was going to take a perfect situation for him to make a return to college coaching, he said. “Obviously, I made a good choice.”
Johnson is convinced returning to Denver will be another good choice. Eight players from last season’s roster have decided to remain in the program and Johnson said he and his staff expect to augment that group through the transfer portal. Going forward, they plan to recruit aggressively in the Denver area and throughout Colorado.
He has hired as his associate head coach Abi Olajuwon — a former assistant with Arizona State, the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun and the Nigerian National Team that played in the 2024 Paris Olympics. She also is the daughter of Hall of Famer Hakeem Olajuwon. Jasmine Gill is on board as an assistant with a reputation for player development.
“One of the players asked, `Coach, how are you doing this? What’s the attraction?’ “ Johnson recalled. “I said guys, look around you. This is a big-time place. We’re winning championships in every other sport. This is a place that knows how to win.’
“Beautiful facilities, gorgeous campus, high-level academics, incredible location. This whole conversation resonated with them. We’re coming into the WCC to compete. It’s a great basketball conference and we’re coming in with an attitude. Really good teams — I’m not making any guarantees that we’re going to beat all of them on Day 1. But we’re absolutely going to compete and there’s no reason DU can’t be at the top of that heap very quickly.”
Johnson says Athletic Director Josh Berlo refers to basketball as “the last frontier” among sports at the university — the sport where DU needs to level up to how well the Pioneers compete on other fronts. Men’s and women’s lacrosse, men’s soccer and gymnastics have excelled at the national level. Denver has won 24 national skiing crowns and the men’s ice hockey team beat Wisconsin 2-1 last month to capture the NCAA Frozen Four men’s championship, its third title in five years, its national-record 11th overall.
“The reality is the university had to make a decision. If we were going to a conference like this, we’ve got to get ready to invest,” Johnson said of the move into the West Coast Conference. “These are basketball schools. We’re going to need to figure out how to get this done.”
Facility upgrades are already under way. Hamilton Gymnasium, home to the men’s and women’s basketball teams, is undergoing a two-phase, $25 million renovation. Premium seat backs and a new scoreboard will be installed this summer, followed a year from now with game suites, new basketball offices and a training room.
Johnson’s team will play a style that mixes what the Pioneers did during his first run and what he’ll bring from Fairfield, which last season led the nation with 11.3 made 3-pointers per game. “We want to be skilled, fast, versatile. That’s both offensively and defensively,” he said.
The success he experienced at Fairfield — a mid-major with similar values — reinforces the good feelings that remain from his first go-around at Denver, when his teams scored wins over Power 4 schools Colorado, Vanderbilt, Oregon and Minnesota.
“One of the attractive things about this-re-marriage between DU and me is we obviously had a lot of success when we were here before,” Johnson said. “What we needed was a coach that was going to come in and say, `This place is awesome. Breathe some confidence into it.’ You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who believes more deeply in DU than I do.”