Most of all, it was a 1979 hit by Shalamar, an R&B group from L.A, known for their stylish fashion and their “body-popping,” street dancing performances.
Their song reached No. 1 on both the soul and the disco/dance charts and they dedicated a version of their hit to the Seattle Supersonics who won the NBA crown that year.
Now the University of Dayton women’s basketball team – thanks to Maliyah Johnson, a fifth-year grad student guard who spent the past four seasons in Power 5 basketball programs – has its own version of “The Second Time Around” and the Flyers hope it ends up a chart topper, too.
Johnson, who’s from the south side of Columbus and once starred at Africentric Early College high school, said she’s been to Dayton just two times in her life.
The first was in March of 2022 – St. Patrick’s Day she said – when UD was able to get her to come to campus for a visit after she’d entered the transfer portal to leave Pitt. She had played two seasons with the Panthers, but then the head coach who recruited her was fired.
Although many programs were interested in her, UD was one of just two schools she visited.
She was drawn here because she and her family knew of Flyers’ head coach Tamika Williams-Jeter, not just from her WNBA career, but going back to her AAU days as a teenager when Maliyah’s mom, Kendra Waters, played against her.
And that connection was deepened because Maliyah had played on the Ohio United AAU team coached by Tamika’s husband, former NBA player Richard Jeter.
There was a second link through Arianna Smith, the UD player who had been Maliyah’s teammate at Africentric.
“When I got here, I…aah… I liked it pretty much,” she recalled with some quiet hesitation. “When I met the other girls, the energy was amazing. But some stuff just didn’t catch my eye. I guess some of it was that I was coming from Pitt in the ACC and I wanted the feel of being in another big-time conference.”
Her other trip was to Houston.
“I fell in love with Houston – the city, the scenery, there was a lot of great food. It was my first time in the South, and I felt that was my type of scene.
“The coaching staff was amazing. Even though I was far from home, it felt like my actual family.”
She chose the Cougars, who play in the Big 12, and that first season (2023-24) she played in 30 games, started six and scored in double figures nine times. That included a career-high 24 points against Grambling.
But before last season – in a scrimmage against the practice team players – she tore the ACL and lateral meniscus in her right knee on a non-contact play.
“I was driving to the basket, planted and tried to turn for a kick out pass, but my knee went the other way,” she said.
“I actually felt the ‘POP’ and I instantly dropped to the ground screaming.”
Ups and downs
She underwent surgery in Houston and was lost for the season.
“The surgeon there told her, ‘Look, I did my job, now the rest is up to you,’” said Kenny Waters, Maliyah’s grandfather and, she said, her most ardent supporter.
“I talked to her a couple of weeks ago and she said she was back about 80 percent. The physical part has come along like it should and now she’s dealing with the mental side.”
Maliyah elaborated on that when we spoke the other day in the trophy-lined foyer of the women’s basketball offices in the Cronin Center:
“The mental part has been the toughest,” she said. “I have my ups and downs – that’s happened a lot. One day I feel I can come back and be as good as ever; other times I just get down on myself.
“I started back shooting around two or three months ago and now I’m doing more workouts with the coaches and sometimes I’ll hop in with everybody else in non-contact drills.
“I still definitely feel nervous when I plant and move, but everybody keeps reminding me I have to trust the doctor’s work.”
She said the coaches remind her of that as does her grandpa, whom she calls PaPa.
He said that’s why he’s glad she’s at UD now.
After last season, the Houston coach – like her Pitt coach – was fired.
Maliyah laughed at my suggestion and said, “No,” she’s not the grim reaper for head coaches: “Tamika doesn’t have to worry!”
Williams-Jeter, she said, is a big reason she’s here.
“I didn’t want to move even farther away from my family, especially now coming back from my injury. I wanted to be someplace I felt comfortable, someplace where I can show what I can do.
“When Tamika called me, she reassured me a lot. She knows me and what type of player I can be. I trust her a lot and know she can help me get back this season and help me in the future.
“I still want to go to the WNBA…She’s been there. She knows the people who can help.
“And even more than that, she can help me be successful in whatever I do.”
Coming together fast
Maliyah said she comes from a basketball family.
Her 73-year-old grandfather played in high school at Columbus Central. Her dad, Marcus Johnson Sr. was a multi-sport athlete at Columbus South and her mom played three years at Gahanna and one at Independence before going to junior college in Coffeyville, Kansas.
“She had a great season, and her coach told me she could end up going anywhere in the country,” Kenny Waters said. “But then Father Time (or maybe it was Mother Nature) stepped in and she got pregnant and that changed things.”
That first-born boy, Marcus Jr., would one day go on to play high school basketball in Columbus too, and he was key in her development, Maliyah said:
“I’d go to the park with him, and he made sure I’d get in the games with the (older) guys because there weren’t a lot of female hoopers there.
“Sometimes guys would want to go easy on me. I didn’t want that. And when you hit a couple of shots on them, you get them to realize you can play.”
Kenny said he had no idea of his granddaughter’s prowess on the court until he was invited to see her play with her seventh-grade team.
A couple of minutes into the game he said he turned around to his daughter and said incredulously: “‘Kendra, who taught her to play like this?’
“Right then I knew she was going to be special.”
At Africentric, her team won two state titles – going 28-0 in the 2018-19 season – and they were headed toward a third straight crown when COVID cancelled the postseason tournament.
She said Pitt was the only Power 5 school that offered her a scholarship.
After playing in the post in high school, she had to switch to be a guard in college and that first season she played in 27 games. She started 26 games the next season (2022-23) and scored in double figures in half of them.
In her three seasons on the court – two with the Panthers and one at Houston – she played in 87 games and started 37.
She got her undergrad degree at Houston and now is working on her master’s at UD.
She’s one of three transfers the Flyers added – 6-foot-3 Fatima Ibrahim came from North Dakota and sophomore guard Jordyn Poole had a redshirt season at Purdue – and last weekend she said the team took part in a chemistry-building retreat at the Athletes in Action complex in Xenia:
“We did a lot of activities – played a lot of games and talked to each other – to help us get to know each other.
“Compared to my other four years in college, this is the first team I’ve been on where it feels like everything is coming together fast. Everybody is bonding. It feels like a team already.
“Our coaches want to get the culture established first before we try to figure out the basketball part of it. Other coaches don’t usually worry about that first, but I think it’s important.”
She said that’s another reason that she feels she made the right choice finally coming to Dayton.
As she talked in the deserted office, you could almost hear that syncopated front trio of Shalamar singing the chorus of their hit:
“The second time around
“Ooh, the second time is so much better, baby
“The second time around
“And I’ll make it better than the first time.”
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