After a week in which two more starters announced intentions to transfer from the program, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men's basketball team received a commitment from junior college guard-forward Rod Johnson for the 2018-19 season.
The 6-foot-8 Johnson averaged 5.9 points and a team-leading 6.1 rebounds per game in his lone season at Highland Community College in Illinois, helping the team to a 26-8 record and the 2018 NJCAA Division I national tournament. In Highland's 91-71 loss to eventual champion South Plains (Texas) in the first round of the tournament, Johnson had a team-high and season-high 16 points.
He also had six games of at least 10 rebounds and grabbed 14 on two occasions.
Johnson started his career at NCAA Division II member Northern Michigan, where as a 6-7 freshman guard he averaged 13.2 minutes, 2.9 points and 2.0 rebounds per game.
Both of his parents played at Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and one of his brothers, Jalen, is listed as the No. 8 player in the 2021 class by 247Sports.
Johnson becomes the 10th player making his UTC debut this coming season. The Mocs brought in junior transfer guard Jerry Johnson last summer and added sophomore transfer forward Ramon Vila - who must sit out the first semester - in December. They signed freshman guards Maurice Commander and Donovann Toatley in November and added freshman forwards Kevin Easley and Keigan Kerby in April. They also added junior college guard Jonathan Scott and forward Thomas Smallwood, a 7-foot graduate transfer from Alabama-Birmingham.
Six-11 forward Justin Brown redshirted last season.
The Johnson news comes soon after junior guards Rodney Chatman and Makale Foreman announced they were leaving the program.
Foreman started all 33 games last season and averaged 10.2 points, shooting 38.2 percent from 3-point range. He has committed to Stony Brook, where Lamar Thompson - an assistant coach at Hargrave Military Academy when Foreman spent a postgraduate season there in 2015-16 - is on the staff.
Chatman averaged 13.3 points, 4.5 assists and 4.1 rebounds per game, missing three games due to an ankle injury suffered against Furman on Feb. 15. He took an official visit to Dayton on Monday and committed there.
Their defections bumped the number of scholarship players leaving UTC's program since the end of the 2017-18 season - which ended with a 10-23 record - to seven. In addition to the graduation of lone senior Joshua Phillips, forward Makinde London declared for the NBA draft and has hired an agent; Nat Dixon has graduated from UTC and announced Monday he would play his final season at Southern Methodist. Freshmen Jonathan Bryant and James Lewis will transfer.
The departing players combined to score 2,048 of the team's 2,289 points last season.
The Mocs will start the 2018-19 season with two players - David Jean-Baptiste and Duane Moss - who played in a UTC game last season. Jean-Baptiste played in all 33 games, starting the final 17 after injuries took a toll on the team. He averaged 6.3 points and 1.9 assists per game, shooting 31 percent from 3-point range.
Upon entering the starting lineup, he averaged 6.7 points and 2.0 assists, shooting 34 percent from 3. He had 18 points, hitting seven of his eight shots and all four of his 3-pointers, in the Mocs' Southern Conference tournament victory over Samford.
Moss averaged 4.9 points and 2.9 rebounds per game in seven contests before a back injury ended his season early. He shot 48 percent from the field and 57 percent from 3-point range.
The Mocs will start the 2018-19 season with 11 percent of their scoring, 12 percent of their rebounding, 17 percent of their assists and 15 percent of their minutes returning.
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenleytfp.