You have to wonder how a guy who is so right for this team could be so dead wrong.

A couple of games ago, Devin Oliver described teammate Chris Johnson as “the man” of the Dayton Flyers team.

The past six games, Johnson has averaged 18.3 points and 8.7 rebounds. If he had carried those numbers through the season, he would be leading the league in scoring and second in rebounds.

Saturday night he was even better than that, scoring 20 points and pulling down 11 rebounds as the Flyers decimated Massachusetts, 76-43, at UD Arena.

The Minutemen never knew what hit them. They had won 19 games and were leading the Atlantic 10 in scoring, averaging 76.4 points, which might explain their late-game chippiness. As frustration set in, they got especially physical inside and ended up taking it out on Matt Kavanaugh. But their pushes and elbows were aimed at the wrong guy.

The Flyer who did them in was Johnson.

Saturday night, once again, he WAS the man.

“Oh no,” he said when he heard that. “I’m a senior. I’m one of the leaders, but I’m not the man of this team.

“Everybody’s the man.”

Johnson embraces praise about the same way he handles verbosity.

“He’s a man of few words,” coach Archie Miller said with a smile. “Ask him a question and it’s ‘yes sir’ and ‘no sir.’ If he’s happy or sad, you’ll never know.”

After the game Johnson was asked about the big tattoo on his left arm.

“A lion,” he said.

The significance?

“Religious.”

Asked about the prominent scar that creeps along the outside of his left eye, he shrugged:

“Fell.”

How about a little more?

“When I was two...in the shower.”

He might not say a lot but he listens to everything you say, said Miller:

“He takes everything to heart. He takes it so seriously. In the beginning of the year I think that held him back a little. I was new and he was really trying to please me. But at times I just wanted him to be aggressive, make mistakes, just don’t be afraid to make plays.”

The 6-foot-6 senior forward agreed with his coach: “It takes time to adjust. Any time you have one coach three years then you get another one your senior year, it takes time to get used to him. It took me a while to understad what Archie wanted.”

He certainly knows now.

“He’s giving us a chance over this month of February to really continue to grow and play well,” said Miller, whose team has won four of its last five and is 18-10.

“Right now he’s playing very confident basketball for us. He’s got an unlimited green light with me. ... And really his scoring is almost secondary to what he brings our team.

“He’s able to score the ball, that’s great, but every day, every game I look at the rebounding totals and he is just ferocious. He wants the ball. Very few guys want the ball in big moments, but he does and he goes and gets it. He’s just reckless in the way he approaches that.

“If you ever were going to do (a film) for kids on how you rebound the ball, you’re gonna show him time and time again just going up and getting it. In big moments he’s not one to shy away.

“For his position, he is probably the best I’ve ever been around.”

Flyers point guard Kevin Dillard said Johnson carried the team early Saturday night, just as he has many times in recent games:

“He’s been giving us everything we need right now.”

Saturday, along with the long 3-pointers and the rebounds he took away from bigger Minutemen who had position, he took on one other mighty task.

When Kavanaugh got knocked to the floor late in the game and popped back up angry and ready to state his own case, Johnson stepped up, wrapped his arms around the much heftier, much angrier teammate and walked him backwards out of harms way as UMass got whistled for the technical.

“I just wanted to make him happy,” Johnson said. “I‘m a senior. I’ve been in situations like that ... I figured I could handle him.”

Of course.

He’s the man.