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At about 8 o'clock Saturday night, J. Fred Johnson Jr. was about where you'd expect him to be.

He was on a sideline of a basketball game in an oddly lit gymnasium having a conniption fit.

His basketball team was doing nowhere near what he expected it to be doing, despite leading by seven, and Johnson was frozen in a familiar pose -- hands behind head, fingers locked, blinking eyes ablaze, muttering unintelligibly and then quite intelligibly.

"Are you kidding me!" he screamed, presumably at a player, possibly an official.

Freddy Johnson, 54, coached Greensboro Day School to another city championship Saturday night, haranguing, berating and cajoling the Bengals to a 57-42 win over Ragsdale in the finals of what was once the Little 4 Invitational High School Basketball Tournament.

Of course, that was back when Greensboro Day was never invited to the annual holiday tournament that is now sponsored by Pizza Hut. Once they got in, and those who were there that night will never forget it, Greensboro Day and rival Dudley began one of the great basketball rivalries in the state.

Since that night in 1987, when Day beat Dudley 57-55 in overtime, the tournament has taken on more importance and significance.

That's roughly when we started hearing about Johnson, a Grimsley kid who got a degree from Greensboro College and a masters from A&T and decided to help coach basketball one year at the private school off Lawndale.

"I've been doing it ever since," he said. "I really don't know what else I would do."

He's been wildly successful at it, winning a remarkable amount of independent schools state titles and infuriating very few people along the way. Most people like him, which is unheard of in an ultra-competitive county of schools, coaches and players.

"I think most everybody likes him," Page coach Robert Kent said. "He's always helping young coaches. Of course his program is different from public schools."

Unlike public schools, which get their students according to school zones, Johnson tends to get kids who want to play basketball for Johnson.

"He recruits," one coach said. "But I would, too."

It's not meant as a slam against Johnson. It's an old argument in a new age of basketball here and elsewhere. Basketball in Guilford County has reached a place it has never seen, a moment in time when everything seems to have come together, producing better players and better teams and more state championships than at any time in history.

The AAU teams are running players through like a pipeline, and upstart schools are springing up and attracting 7-footers and power forwards and point guards from across the country. Private schools are bringing in 6-foot-8 exchange students, and new public schools are attracting 6-3 shooting guards from across county lines. They come here to play for the power programs, the power teams that run year-round and the power coaches that walk the side- lines of some of the best basketball games we've ever seen here.

The talent runs in cycles, but Johnson has his share of that talent most years. He's in a cycle now that's gone on since Greensboro Day decided to start a basketball program. Last year, his 31st on the Bengals' bench, he won his 700th game. Through the years, he's won 19 conference championships and has been named conference coach of the year 15 times. Johnson's teams have won seven NCISAA state championships and have played in 13 title games.

Most of his players go on to play college ball, some at a high level, and a fair amount of his assistant coaches are now coaching in college, too. And a few are scattered around the state's high schools, part of the most impressive coaching tree in North Carolina. There are those who believe he is the best coach in the state, an honor he would deflect easily.

"Mac Morris is the best coach we've ever seen," he says, talking about the architect of the Page teams that dominated the area and state for years.

Of course, after Morris retired, he became one of Johnson's assistants, too.

They ran Johnson's system, the one they run at the middle school level at Day and the one they run at the levels below that and the one many coaches run at the youth leagues and Y-leagues and Rec leagues and AAU factories and high school programs all over North Carolina.

The tournament ended Saturday night about the way you'd expect, with Johnson freaking out on the sideline and countless coaches in the stands watching some of the best basketball players we've seen. Most of them were playing for Johnson.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com