Johnson is Wofford's athletics architect

Your bracket says Wofford is a No. 13 seed today against Wisconsin but madness is relative.

Factor in enrollment, a long shortcut from little NAIA status to Big Dance fame and the all-important "odds against" category. No doubt, these yapping Terriers qualify as the No. 1 overall seed in any sort of appreciative participant bracket.

It's easiest to connect dots through Richard Johnson, the 1976 Citadel graduate who as Wofford's athletic director and former head basketball coach has done more than anyone else to put a Spartanburg school with 1,450 smart students on the most prominent map in college sports.

--Wofford in Johnson's first game as head coach defeated the Coker College Cobras. That was November of 1985.

--By the 1988-89 season, Wofford was playing an NCAA Division II schedule. They finished 17-11 but lost a game at Virginia Tech, 101-65.

--The Terriers became an NCAA Division I independent in 1995.

--They joined the Southern Conference in 1998.

--Johnson moved from head coach to athletic director in 2002 after handpicking assistant coach Mike Young as his successor.

Today in Jacksonville it's Wofford-Wisconsin, in the same pod with mighty Duke, in the same tournament as Kansas and Kentucky.

Milestone moment

Wofford on Johnson's AD watch has been to the NCAA baseball tournament and advanced in the Division I-AA football playoffs. This is a first for the basketball program.

"I think the rest of my colleagues would cut me some slack if I took a little extra pride in this one," Johnson said. "For a couple reasons. This one is front and center. It's three weeks and it's national news."

The Wofford family celebrated in Charlotte when the Terriers clinched their NCAA trip with a victory over Appalachian State in the Southern Conference tournament championship game, and partied again Monday night on Morgan Square in Spartanburg.

But the lasting scene took place inside Leonard Auditorium. Johnson picked "the intellectual heart and soul of the campus" as the place for players, fellow students and fans to watch last Sunday's NCAA tournament Selection Show.

"Every class of Wofford students from the founding of the college has gathered there for important milestones in the college's history, and this was one of those," Johnson said. "The actual moment you see a No. 4 seed pop up and they're playing a No. 13 seed and you're that No. 13 seed and it's Greg Gumbel reading it ... Well, that's one you won't forget. That's pretty special. I've been watching those selection shows for a lot of years and that spontaneous burst of emotion from our crowd, that was really special."

Citadel ties

Breaking down the bracket, Johnson found a "full circle" tie to The Citadel.

California is in Jacksonville, Fla., too, as a No. 8 seed playing tonight against No. 9 Louisville.

The Cal head coach is Mike Montgomery, a former Citadel assistant coach who convinced a 6-8 high school kid from Blue Island, Ill., to come to Charleston.

"Mike Montgomery," Johnson said, "is how I got to The Citadel."

The other assistant on George Hill's Citadel staff was Les Robinson, who later became Johnson's head coach. Robinson, now a member of the NIT committee, phoned Johnson a few weeks ago when Wofford clinched the Southern Conference's NIT bid with a regular season championship.

"Les was funny," Johnson said. "He just said, 'This is the NIT calling and I want to extend an invitation to you.' "

Johnson called Robinson back after the SoCon title game.

"I'd like to respectfully decline your invitation," Johnson said.

A lot has happened to Johnson, and to Wofford, since he left The Citadel.

"It is a vastly dissimilar program from where we started, just in terms of who we're playing," Johnson said. "What hasn't changed in the wide spectrum are the kids. They are fundamentally the same type of individuals we had when I started in 1985. They are here for the right reasons, because they want to get a degree and they understand there is more to life than just basketball."

Wofford basketball probably will always be the same.

Except that it will never be the same after today's NCAA Tournament appearance and no one is more appreciative than the primary architect.

Reach Gene Sapakoff at gsapakoff@postandcourier.com.