LOS ANGELES — The tennis court is not the usual place you would find a Division 1 basketball team. But because of COVID-19, it’s where the LMU men’s basketball team had to practice for weeks during the early part of their training camp. It’s just another of the unusual circumstances new head coach Stan Johnson has had to deal with.

He was hired on March 20, less than one week after the sports world shut down because of the coronavirus. The coach’s first sight of his new campus was of an empty one.  

“I was up there pretty much alone,” Johnson said. “You feel like you’re on an island. ‘Is anybody there?”

Johnson did not meet his players face to face until late August, and did not get into an actual basketball gym with them until just one month before the season began. Already, the Lions have already had five games either canceled or postponed, but they’re optimistic the season can successfully be completed.

“We’ve gotta be able to pivot, and the teams that can pivot the best, teams that will give themselves the best chance to win in this climate,” said Johnson.

LMU has not been to the NCAA tournament in three decades. But star senior Eli Scott is buying in to what his new coach is preaching – that overcoming COVID will be their biggest key to success.

“(Coach Johnson) said the team that deals with COVID the best this year will make the tournament,” said Scott.

“I feel as if there’s gonna be a few teams (will make it) that if the world was normal probably wouldn’t make the tournament, but they dealt with COVID the best.”

“We have to find the beauty in adversity,” Coach Johnson added.  

“If we sit around and just say man ‘this stinks. This is hard. We’ll never find the beauty and we won’t have a great story to tell.”

Right now, their story is off to a 5-3 start, with conference play approaching. While all is still quiet on campus, Coach Johnson hopes to make lots of noise on the court in March.