Almost as soon as he steps off the mound, it’s as if Illinois pitcher Kevin Johnson is beginning to prepare for his next start. He’ll start reflecting in his head about what he did right and wrong on the mound. Sometimes he’ll do some resistance band workouts before he wraps his arm in ice.

And he just can’t wait to get back on the mound and pitch.

Illinois begins what is now a four-game series against Oakland on Friday, with a doubleheader added for Saturday. Johnson will take the mound for Game One on Friday, just as he has for every start the past three seasons. He’s been given the task of putting the Illinois baseball team back on the right path after losing two out of three last week to Nebraska.

Johnson has yet to miss a start in his college career, accumulating 305 2/3 innings at Illinois, making him one of only four pitchers in Illinois history to do so. Johnson just passed his pitching coach, Drew Dickinson, (304 2/3) last Friday for third on the all-time list. While Johnson has been starting since his first year at Illinois, Dickinson only pitched nine innings his freshman season, a fact of which he has no problem reminding Johnson.

“I’ll just give him crap and say, ‘Yeah, it took you 4 years,’” Dickinson said.

Barring injury, Johnson will almost certainly pass the remaining members of the list: Brett Weber (315 2/3) and Mark Dressen (328 2/3). A lot of things have to go right for a pitcher to accrue 300 innings in a college career. The pitcher has to be in the starting rotation for three or four years, so they have to be good. Then you’ve got to stay healthy.

Johnson will attribute his health to luck, but arguably no one on the team does a better job taking care of his arm. He follows the same strict training regimen between starts and has since his freshman year at Illinois. Dickinson hopes his words are always in the back of Johnson’s mind: “It’s your craft. Your arm is your livelihood.”

After pitching Friday, he goes for a run Saturday morning, no more than 25 minutes, before a full-body workout. He’ll do workouts to loosen up his shoulder, elbow and leg exercises.

Then he plays catch at about 90 feet, sometimes the day after throwing more than 100 pitches. By Sunday, he throws a bullpen of around 45 pitches. A quick turnaround before he’s back throwing off the mound again.

It’s surprising, considering pitchers are often held back with innings limits and pitch counts.

However, Dickinson wants his pitchers to throw and throw often. He recalls his playing days when he’d throw every day, and when he came back after taking a day off, it felt like he hadn’t thrown in months.

“I feel like that builds strength and stability in your arm,” Dickinson said. “When you don’t throw more, bad things can happen.”

“I’ve always been a rubber-arm type guy, but I was never a hard thrower like Kevin either. I just threw all the time. Throwing made it feel better; I didn’t want to sit around getting stiff.”

Johnson feels much of the same, and he likes throwing as much as possible.

On Monday, he’s playing catch about 180 feet apart. Tuesday: he’s throwing another bullpen; this one may be closer to 25 pitches often with live hitters. Wednesday: more long toss. Thursday: he’s throwing again at about 90 feet before he gets back on the mound the next day.

Johnson is in tune with his body, so earlier in the year when he felt slight shoulder soreness, he went straight to the trainer to get it worked on. That lasted during the past three weeks, and now he says the pain is gone.

“Especially at the beginning of the year, you get a little sore, but you just fight through it,” Johnson said. “You get to a certain point where you just stop getting sore. It hurts at first, but then it goes away.”

It’s as if he’s trained his arm to stop feeling sore. When he gets to pitch 80, 90, 100, his arm feels just the same as it did early in the game. Johnson has developed into one of the biggest constants for the Illini during his career.

That consistency helped him get drafted in the 31st round by the New York Yankees last summer. He turned the offer down, partly because of the round he was drafted in, but also because there were some things he thought he could improve on in another year in college.

He realized that he was giving up too many hits on 0-2 counts, and needed to develop another pitch. So he developed a slider during the offseason. It’s helped raise his strikeout rate this season, with 31 in 38 2/3 innings compared with just 43 strikeouts through 88 innings in 2012.

He took some time Wednesday to look up Oakland. He likely saw a struggling team coming into Illinois Field with a 3-15 record, losers of five in a row. Johnson won’t care — he’ll still prepare the same way, every time.

“I’m excited to go out there,” Johnson said. “It doesn’t matter to me who we’re playing.”

Jamal can be reached at collie10@ dailyillini.com and @jamalcollier.