Johnson schedules surgery, likely will miss several games

David Johnson has had a run of bad luck during the early stages of his Southeast Missouri State basketball career.

Johnson has already been hit with a variety of ailments, the latest being a hernia that will require surgery and likely sideline him for at least several games and perhaps as much as a month.

Southeast coach Gary Garner said Thursday that Johnson will have the surgery -- to be performed by his personal physician in St. Louis -- some time in the next few days.

It has not yet been determined exactly how long Johnson -- Southeast's third-leading scorer at 9.7 points per game -- will be sidelined, but he definitely won't play Saturday when the Redhawks open their Ohio Valley Conference schedule at Tennessee-Martin.

Johnson, a 6-foot-4 junior college transfer guard/forward, also probably won't be able to play in Southeast's two OVC home games next week, against Tennessee State on Thursday and Tennessee Tech on Saturday.

"We just don't know right now how long he might be out," Garner said. "Hopefully he won't miss too many games, but you never know."

Garner said Johnson also needed hernia surgery prior to the beginning of his sophomore year at Meramec Community College in St. Louis.

"That hernia was on the other side, and he had the surgery about 16, 18 months ago," Garner said. "This hernia started bothering him a couple of weeks ago, and I guess it just got worse recently."

Johnson apparently had the condition flare up at Saturday's practice in Lincoln, Neb., just two days after he scored a team-high 16 points during a win at South Dakota State in his first Southeast start.

Johnson was also scheduled to start Sunday's game at Nebraska, but wound up coming off the bench and scoring just two points in 18 minutes.

Johnson missed both exhibition games with a badly sprained thumb. After scoring 11 points off the bench during Southeast's season opener against Truman State, he sat out the second game against IPFW after suffering a head injury in practice.

"David has just really had a lot of bad luck so far," Garner said. "It's a shame for him, and he was playing really well before this latest situation came up.

"Hopefully this [the surgery] will get everything cleared up and he'll come back 100 percent."