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8B the university daily kansan
basketball preview
tuesday, November 11, 2003
Lee looks to play leadership role as junior
By Joey Berlin jberlin@kansan.com kansan sportswriter
At the start of Kansas' 2002-03 season, Mike Lee wasn't on the minds of many Jayhawk basketball fans. He was roster filler, one of the handful of players coach Roy Williams inserted at the end of blowout victories.
Four-and-a-half months later, there was Lee, with just seconds left in the national championship game, spotting up for a threepointer that would have pulled Kansas into a tie with Syracuse. Back in November, the scene would have been unthinkable.
Syracuse's Hakim Warrick swatted Lee's shot out of bounds, and Kansas lost 81-78. But his mere presence on the floor at the end of a close national title game punctuated one of Kansas basketball's most remarkable stories of last season: Mike Lee's rise to usefulness.
"It's hard for me to just grasp the whole thing, as far as being in the national championship game, a lot of people don't even get to do that," he said. "Then to get the shot, I'm still overwhelmed by the whole thing."
Lee, a 6-foot-3 guard, emerged out of nowhere as last year's defensive stopper on the bench. Not only that, he put some points on the board, averaging 4.9 points per game and leading Kansas in three-point field goal percentage. Lee hit exactly 50 percent of his threepointers (21-42) and scored in double figures five times, including 13 points in the Jayhawks' Final Four victory over Marquette.
"Honestly, I don't feel like I did something so overwhelming last year. I came in the game, I played defense and I knocked down wide open shots."
Kansas basketball guard
"I didn't surprise myself," Lee, now a junior, said. "Honestly, I didn't feel like I did something so overwhelming last year. I came in the game, I played defense and I knocked down wide-open shots. The most average player in college basketball does that every day."
Maybe so, but Lee never even got the chance to look like an average player during his freshman year. He played in just 27 of 37 games, averaging 3.3 minutes per game.
Lee had come from the same Portland, Ore., high school as Miles, a McDonald's All-American point guard, and the prevailing opinion was that Williams had recruited Lee only to lure Miles to Kansas. When Lee spent the majority of that first year at the end of the bench, it appeared to be true.
But last year, Williams' thin crop of reserves made Lee the first guard off the bench, giving him a
chance to shine. He did just that in the sixth game of the year against Oregon in his hometown of Portland. Kansas lost 84-78, but Lee provided a spark that kept the Jayhawks in the game until the end. He scored 11 points, the first double-figure scoring performance of his career, and pulled down eight rebounds, a phenomenal performance on the boards for someone his size.
Lee had only played four minutes in Kansas' third game of the year against North Carolina and didn't play the following game against Florida. After the loss in Oregon, he never saw less than 11 minutes of action the rest of the season.
Lee said his role this year would be different, but it had nothing to do with new coach Bill Self. As an upperclassman, he said he had to play more of a leadership role after two years of following the departed Nick Collison and Kirk Hinrich.
"I've got to make sure I'm on top of my game so they can see that and follow my lead," he said.
Self said he anticipated that Lee would compete for a starting spot, but Lee said he tried not to think about that. "Honestly, it wouldn't matter to me at all if I never started here the next two years," he said. "As long as I'm on the court, as long as Kansas is winning, I'm fine."
"Honestly, I feel like it's more important who's on the court at the end of the game."
-Edited by Ashley Marriott
Junior guard Mike Lee emerged as Kansas' sixth man last season in the team's run through the NCAA tournament. The Portland, Ore., native is one of four juniors expected to lead the Jawahiri this season.
Kansan file photo
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