Emma Johansson is a horse girl. She also loves the Swedish fika. And, she’s about to become a pro basketball player.
A native of Sweden, Johansson played two seasons of college basketball at South Florida (under current Dallas Wings head coach Jose Fernandez) before finishing out her career at California Baptist. The 6-foot-3 forward/center averaged 10.4 points, 6.5 rebounds and 2.7 blocks per game as a senior during the 2025-26 season, starting all 34 games for the Lancers.
Her nearly three blocks per game earned her Western Athletic Conference (WAC) Defensive Player of the Year honors. She also helped the Lancers win the WAC Tournament, which secured them a berth in the 2026 NCAA Tournament—and a first-round date with the eventual national champions and No. 1 overall seed UCLA.
Guarding Lauren Betts and the rest of Bruins who are now in the WNBA prepared Johansson to be ready to contribute to her new team in Spain. She’ll be suiting for Perfumerías Avenida in Liga Femenina.
Johansson recently spoke to Swish Appeal about both her basketball and beyond basketball lives, as well as her final college game against UCLA. Here are some highlights from the interview.
On moving to the United States from Sweden:
[My parents] didn’t go with me and I didn’t have a visit either because it was COVID time, so I had an online meeting to see the school and prepare. I feel like you can’t really prepare for something like that, you just have to get out of your comfort zone if you want to move away or move somewhere for your sport.
You don’t have to feel ready to do something like that. I think that will go far with that.
On her final college game against the eventual 2026 NCAA champions, UCLA:
Of course they were one of the top teams in the US and we knew that it was going to be a huge challenge. All of their seniors have been playing together [for years] and the team was very experienced. It was good to play against them. We as a team were actually able to hang with them for maybe 15-20 minutes. It was pretty close, but they had a wider bench and it was hard.
I remember that game because I got fouled very early and was pretty mad about that. Guarding Lauren Betts, for example, was a very hard task. She was unstoppable under the basket.
A special thank you to Lorenzo Gallotti of Two Points Agency for arranging the interview.
