Aaron Johnson's family piled into two vans, a truck and a car for the 10-hour caravan from Chicago, then crammed 18 people into three hotel rooms.
All to see the UAB point guard and national assists leader play his final regular-season game at Bartow Arena. Family is big for this really big family.
''They could have given us one room here, and we could have made it,'' said Rashaun Johnson, 28 and the oldest of 12 siblings. ''One room, one bed, and nobody would have complained about anything.''
They certainly weren't complaining about the outcome.
Aaron Johnson led the Blazers to a 66-48 win over East Carolina on Saturday to clinch their first outright Conference USA regular-season title.
Johnson's numbers in two of the biggest games of coach Mike Davis's tenure at UAB: 18 points, 23 assists, a single turnover and, in the finale, one Chicago-style cheering section. The final tally was 27 family members, 22 of whom were on the court with him for the Senior Night ceremony before the game.
The senior leads the Blazers (22-7) into the league tournament hoping to finally make it into the NCAA field. They'll play the East Carolina-Central Florida winner on Thursday.
And the team's smallest player is one of the biggest reasons for this season's success. The 5-foot-8, 185-pounder is averaging 11.1 points and 7.8 assists per game and was named first-team All-Conference USA on Monday by coaches and media.
And, even more important, Johnson is set in May to become the first member of his family to graduate from college.
''He's a special kid,'' Davis said. ''I'm saying that not because of winning games. He's here, he's going to graduate. He's had 90 percent of his practice and games at a level that very few can match from an effort standpoint. I think he's player of the year in our conference.
''He's the (top) defensive guy in our conference.''
Johnson holds UAB's career and single-season assist records, reaching double digits 10 times this season. He had a 26-point, 14-assist, seven-rebound performance in a triple overtime win over C-USA rival UTEP in January.
Johnson is mainly a driver and passer who generates chances for others, not a shooter. Rashaun Johnson said growing up in a sometimes five-to-a-bedroom house helped shape his brother's generosity.
''Aaron's the kind of person, he likes to make other people happy,'' said Rashaun, who played a season in junior college. ''He's always been that way. Even as a child, sharing things, he had no problem with it.''
Johnson is the fourth-oldest of 12 children. Only one sibling, brother Tony, failed to make the trip to Birmingham last week - his wife had a baby that morning.
A sister who's a freshman at the University of Missouri rode a bus to Chicago, and a cousin from Iowa also met the family in the city for the caravan. Others came later.
Johnson was raised in the rough Engelwood community on Chicago's Southside by parents Anthony Bowens and Sharon Johnson, longtime partners who have never married.
Rashaun, who works as a security supervisor for a Chicago company, said all of the kids steered clear of legal trouble growing up in what Aaron Johnson describes as ''probably the baddest area on the Southside of Chicago.''
''My dad and my mom are strong-willed people,'' the UAB star said. ''They made sure that we stayed close to each other, and they made sure that they instilled principles in us from the beginning.''
But the family did have its share of adversity.
Johnson said they were evicted from three homes, once splitting up for eight months when he was in the 10th grade. His mother stayed in a shelter with the younger children, while the others lived in the apartments of Rashaun or sister Tabitha.
''We called them every day to make sure everybody was OK,'' Johnson said. ''It was definitely hard at times, but we didn't let it knock us down. We tried to keep moving in the best direction possible.''
When Johnson talks about the challenges of growing up in Englewood and things that can lead youngsters ''onto the wrong path,'' he follows that up with the positives of neighbors helping each other out. And about changing diapers and feeding the younger siblings when he was just a kid himself.
It gave him a chance to be a role model like Rashaun was to him. And the big family supplied that healthy cheering section on Senior Night.
