What Will Happen To Donovan Johnson Next Season?

Source: TRIB LIVE HSSN

Donovan “Puff” Johnson won a PIAA Boys basketball championship with the Moon Area Tigers on Friday March 22nd 2019. That might have been one of the most memorable moments in Johnson’s life. Recently, Puff has been getting a boat load of offers from colleges to play basketball at the college level. Some of the big time schools he has gotten offers from are Arizona, North Carolina, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Pitt, Xavier, Wofford, Cincinnati and Auburn. Puff was selected as the 2019 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Fab 5 for Boys basketball. Puff has been in the news recently because of whether or not the WPIAL will let him play next season which will be his senior year of high school basketball. You see, Puff played middle school basketball for Moon in 7th and 8th grade and then he repeated 8th grade at Rhema Christian School in Coraopolis and apparently played some games for their middle school team. After that, Puff played basketball for the Our Lady of the Sacred Heart in 9th and 10th grade in which both of those seasons OLSH made it to the WPIAL championship game and lost both times to Sewickley Academy. Then last season, Puff went back to Moon Area High School for his junior year and lost the WPIAL 5A championship game; but won the PIAA 5A championship game. If you do the math, Puff played six seasons of basketball after sixth grade and under PIAA rules, which the WPIAL follows, a student may not play in more than six seasons in a sport after the sixth grade. Under PIAA rules, Johnson could be granted a waiver for an extra year of eligibility because of “severe and unusual personal hardship.” The hearing for Johnson is still to be determined. Now, if Johnson becomes eligible to play next year, the question will be where will he play next year? If Johnson becomes eligible and stays at Moon next year, he will be playing on a team without Connor Ryan, Austin Ryan, Taru Jones, Jioni Smith, Tre Carter, Devonate Humphries as they all just graduated high school this past Friday. Did I mention that all 6 of those guys that I just named including Puff got most of the playing time for the Tigers last season? We will see if Johnson would want to play at Moon next season with players that did not get a whole lot of playing time the season before. Perhaps all the other Moon players, that will return next season, will ball out. Imagine this situation for a second. “Donovan Johnson transfers back to OLSH for his senior year of high school basketball.” That would be absolutely crazy if he did and perhaps this situation could happen. With all this madness going on with the PIAA thinking about separating public schools and private schools from playing each other in the postseason and getting rid of the transfer rule anything could happen in the PIAA sports world at this point. Put yourself in Puff’s situation. Wouldn’t you want to play at OLSH next year? Think about it, you would play on a team that would have two big time players that will return next year in Dante Spadafora and Jake DiMichele. Spadafora will be a junior next season and DiMichele will be a sophomore next season. Both of these guys found a way to win a WPIAL championship at OLSH last season and perhaps Puff might want to join the party in helping OLSH win another WPIAL championship. If Puff would go back to play with the Chargers next season, OLSH would easily be one of the favorites to win the WPIAL 2A championship for the second straight year. Serra Catholic will lose Jimmy Moon and Khalil Smith next season. Sewickley Academy will lose five seniors next season. Jeannette will lose four key productive players on there team next season as well. If Johnson would go back to OLSH, there would be no excuses of why they can not win another WPIAL championship. We all need to remember that players in WPIAL 2A such as Malik Ramsey (California), Isiah Warfield (Sewickley Academy), Langston Moses (Winchester Thurston) and other players will try their very best to carry there teams and stop OLSH from repeating. Oh yeah, Sto-Rox will have all of their players return next season as none of there players from last season were seniors so they will all have experience in trying to stop OLSH in 2A. There is no question that Donovan “Puff” Johnson is one of the most popular and one of the best basketball players in the WPIAL and the rest of the media cannot wait to see what happens with him in next season.

BY Hilton: bythebossandgoat@gmail.com and Twitter @BYHilton13