BATON ROUGE — Flau'jae Johnson leaned back and knocked on the wooden trim of her locker twice, once after each question.
"What do you expect in tomorrow's game against San Diego State coming off an injury?"
"What have you gotten better at while sitting out the last three games?"
The LSU women's basketball star and leading scorer has been fully cleared and is ready to suit up for the No. 3 seed Tigers (28-5) versus the No. 14 seed Aztecs (25-9) to tip off the first round of Women's March Madness inside the Pete Maravich Assembly Center on Saturday night (9:15 p.m., ESPN).
"That was makes this so crazy, I've never had a major injury — I pray I don't," Johnson said while knocking on wood. "Being out in any capacity, it can either teach you something of you can become like a victim. I just want to see what I can get out of it. If I'm going to be injured, I'm going to get better at something. That's what my mindset is."
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Johnson hasn't played since LSU's overtime loss at Alabama on Feb. 22 and subsequently missed the next two games, dealing with shin inflammation that originally flared up around the regular season matchup at Texas.
Dating back to her high school days, Johnson has never dealt with a serious or lingering injury. Nowadays, she's walking around with a compression shoe on her right foot that prevents pressure while she's mobile and keeps her foot and shin area warm. She only takes it off to practice and the expectation is put it back on, on the sideline when she is subbed out of the game Saturday and possibly beyond.
But while sitting out, Johnson detailed how she used the situation to get better. She told the Daily Advertiser during the SEC Tournament while she wasn't playing she had been acting as more of a player-coach, helping her teammates see things and walking them through situations on the sideline during games.
"Being a better teammate, being a better coach when I was coaching. Overall my mental, that's what I was working on," Johnson said. "I was reading a lot more, journaling a lot more and just seeing the game from a different perspective."
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Cory Diaz covers the LSU Tigers for The Daily Advertiser as part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow his Tigers coverage on Twitter: @ByCoryDiaz. Got questions regarding LSU athletics? Send them to Cory Diaz at bdiaz@gannett.com .
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: How LSU's Flau'jae Johnson got better while injured before March Madness
