Tennessee Temple senior Jarrod Johnson has extra incentive to help the Crusaders reach the Class A state basketball semifinals.

If Temple makes it past Wednesday’s first-round game against Cloudland, his mother will have the rare opportunity to watch him play.

A longtime Army veteran now stationed in North Carolina preparing for a June deployment to Iraq, Sanyo Dabe’s military career has taken her and Jarrod around the world, but he hopes his basketball career will bring his mother to Murfreesboro on Friday.

“She’ll be there,” Johnson said. “I think I play better when I play in front of my mom. I can always hear her yelling from the stands.”

Johnson transferred to Temple before his junior season when Dabe was sent to serve in Korea. Since then he has lived with teammate Brandon Andrews, whose parents are also Johnson’s godparents.

Because of the circumstances surrounding his transfer, the TSSAA approved a hardship request that allowed Johnson to become eligible immediately. Last year the 6-foot-4 post helped the Crusaders make a surprise run to the state tournament while adjusting to a new school, team and family.

“His impact was immediate,” Temple coach Caleb Marcum said. “He’s always been a hard worker, but his first year he did struggle some. He wasn’t used to the environment, and you could tell he was thinking about his mom and missed her a lot. But he’s just a great guy. He goes out every day and gives it everything he’s got. Even his first year he did that. He’s a good leader for our team, just one of those guys you’d want your son to be like.”

Johnson’s childhood was spent moving from town to town, and in some cases from country to country. Born in Germany, he also spent time in Japan, where he attended school on the Army base and played basketball with and against native students. Despite a rec-league loss to an all-girls Japanese team that Johnson recalls with a laugh, his basketball skills flourished while playing school and AAU ball.

Although he enjoyed his experiences traveling and playing in new places, Johnson said he’s happy with the decision he and his mother made for him to spend his final two years of high school at Temple.

“It was fun meeting new people, going to different schools, and playing against people of different ethnicities,” Johnson said. “But the transition has been easy, because I’ve been around a lot of good people. I really didn’t know anything about Temple basketball until I walked in the gym and saw all those banners hanging up, but it makes you want to go out there and play hard to keep that tradition going.”

Johnson and his mother often talk after games, and she was able to come to Chattanooga for the Crusaders’ first game this season against Grace Academy. She also has followed Temple’s season online and has had plenty to keep up with this year as Johnson has averaged 12 points and 10 rebounds a game for the 26-5 Crusaders.

The team’s tallest player has become a dominant presence in the paint, and his contributions on offense and defense have grown along with his confidence, giving the Crusaders another dangerous weapon when opponents focus on shutting down leading scorer Jeremy Sexton.

“He’s a beast,” Marcum said of Johnson. “He gets rebound after rebound after rebound. He runs really well and has improved tremendously at every part of his game that helps him offensively, and that’s given him a lot of confidence. It’s great because people have to keep an eye on him. There’s always a threat. It gives us a good post presence, but he also causes several mismatches just because of his athleticism. We try to take advantage of that, and it’s really helped us.”

Besides helping fill a role the Crusaders needed, Marcum said Johnson’s presence has had a positive impact on the team’s chemistry. In return, his performance at Temple should help lead Johnson to a college basketball career.

“A lot of scouts say after two years at a junior college, if he continues to develop his skills, he could play major Division I basketball,” Marcum said. “There are some high hopes for him. It’s very rare to see a 6-4 athletic guy with his work ethic.”

And Johnson hopes Temple will have one extra fan in the stands this weekend to watch him display it.