Hope he can go for his and the team’s sake (and for us fans’ s sake).
He and Young have been the most consistent players in terms of in their contribution to our wins all season long. Take away either piece and the challenge, already pretty big for this game, becomes huge.
We cannot out-score Houston without out-rebounding and at least matching their D intensity. We aren’t winning a shootout. Johnson has quietly done an exceptional job of rebounding and disrupting other team’s interior game all season. And we’ve seen what happened when he is out with foul trouble.
If he can’t go, I gotta think Pike will be forced into altering his tactical approach to the game. Would need to do things to protect Cliff from foul trouble so he can be there the whole game to rebound. Maybe play zone, play Harper on the center and CO on a forward, I don’t know. But I do know we’d have to do something different because Cliff is too raw to successfully interchangeably mimic Myle’s contribution.