Raven Johnson, South Carolina salivating at chance to win second straight national championship

TAMPA, Fla.— South Carolina guard Raven Johnson had just turned 10 when Connecticut’s Breanna Stewart won her first of four national championships. She remembers watching that game with her family in the living room of her Atlanta home.

She watched in awe the three subsequent years, when Stewart led the Huskies back to the mountaintop.Johnson imagined herself following Stewart’s path to global stardom. “I want to be in moments like this,” Johnson told her parents and anyone else who’d listen back when she was a preteen.

“I want to win back-to-back-to-back national [championships].” Johnson has won at every stage of her basketball career.So, of course, winning multiple times on college basketball’s grandest stage felt attainable. But it’s surreal — even now as a two-time national champion — that Johnson, the “conductor” of the Gamecocks’ special senior class, finds herself banging on the door of another title and South Carolina’s third in four years. “It’s literally crazy,” Johnson said Saturday.

“It felt like yesterday when I was talking like that.” Johnson has been talking about winning championships with South Carolina before she even stepped foot on campus.And she started working toward that goal a year before her first game. Johnson would figure out what recruits Dawn Staley was targeting and would reach out. “She described herself as Big Bird,” Staley said of Johnson.

“She was going to be the last one to commit.She was going to get all her troops lined up and then Big Bird’s going to bring it all home.” Johnson helped get Sania Feagin and Bree Hall to sign on with her as part of South Carolina’s 2021 high school recruiting class. Want to tune into as much March Madness as you can? DIRECTV Stream and Hulu + Live TV both have you covered with every channel you’ll need, plus free trials.“Raven consistently said, ‘We’re going to win championships,’ ” Staley said.

“And you’re thinki...