URBANA — Arisa Johnson got the call that she said flipped her family’s world upside down at 4 a.m.
On the phone that March morning was Illinois men’s basketball coach John Groce. What he told her, that her son, Illini point guard Jaylon Tate, had been arrested for allegedly punching a woman in the face, has become “a nightmare” for Johnson and her family.
“From that moment forward, the thing that has given me strength and allowed me to endure this moving forward is Coach Groce telling me in that conversation that he believed in Jay’s innocence and that he was telling the truth,” Johnson said Friday afternoon at the Champaign County Courthouse.