Woodling: Did Lee discover himself?

By Chuck Woodling     Mar 1, 2004

Wayne Swanson stopped me as I was heading out the northwest tunnel of Allen Fieldhouse.

“Was that the real Michael Lee out there today?” Swanson asked me.

A Topeka resident who is confined to a wheelchair, Swanson has been sitting in the corner by that tunnel during Kansas University men’s basketball games ever since I can remember.

On this Sunday afternoon, Swanson wasn’t any different than any other basketball fan. He knew that Lee had come out of the bullpen and played a significant role in the Jayhawks’ 79-58 victory over Oklahoma.

Lee scored 12 points — three more than in the last five games combined — grabbed four rebounds and helped hold the Sooners, the Big 12’s most offensively challenged team, to 40.4 percent shooting, which, curiously, is also the Sooners’ field-goal percentage for the season.

Was that the real Michael Lee indeed?

No doubt Bill Self must be hoping so, now that David Padgett is out indefinitely after spraining an ankle Sunday and the Jayhawks’ depth more comparable to a puddle than to the Marianas Trench.

Perhaps Lee, who was a certified bench presence during last year’s NCAA Final Four season, did rediscover his game against the Sooners. If he did, Lee certainly will remember the moment that triggered the turnaround.

Self had inserted Lee after the Jayhawks had stormed to a 20-7 bulge. For six minutes, Lee played hard on defense, was credited with an assist and pulled down a rebound. Then he tried to play a little one-on-one on offense, lost the ball out of bounds and was hooked. (For some reason, that turnover does not appear on the stat sheet, but Lee definitely dribbled the ball out of bounds).

“Where were you going?” Self asked as Lee passed him on the way to reclaiming a bench seat.

From the stands, it appeared Lee responded with a disgusted retort, but Lee says that wasn’t the case, stressing that he “politely” told Self he was attempting to drive to the basket.

Anyway, the stat sheet at intermission showed Lee with six minutes with no points and one rebound. Who would have believed the 6-foot-3 junior from Portland, Ore., would become a second-half spark? Let’s just say he was an unlikely candidate.

“I was upset a little bit,” Lee said about his first-half showing, “but I told myself I wasn’t doing what I was capable of doing. I just tried to do what I could do, play defense and keep my head in the game.”

To hear Self tell it, however, Lee is a better player when he keeps his head out of the game.

“In the second half, he didn’t think once,” the KU coach said when asked about Lee’s yeoman middle-relief performance. “All he did was play. If guys are happy when they’re taken out of the game, they’re not very great competitors. He obviously got the message and came out and played.”

It’s no secret Lee and the rest of the Jayhawks play better at home than they do on the road. Only two Big 12 teams are unbeaten in conference home games. Kansas is one. Oklahoma State is the other. That the Cowboys have a two-game lead over KU in league standings punctuates the Jayhawks’ home-road differential.

On paper, Kansas still has a chance to tie for a third straight conference regular-season championship, but that chance will disappear after tonight’s Texas-Oklahoma State game. The UT-OSU winner will have a 2 1/2 game lead over the Jayhawks with two to play.

Those two remaining games — against Nebraska Wednesday in Allen Fieldhouse and at Missouri next Sunday — probably will determine how high a seed the Jayhawks will receive from the NCAA Selection Committee, although the Big 12 tournament will factor in as well.

When push comes to shove and RPIs are separated by hundredths of a decimal point in the NCAA computer, the team making noise down the stretch often earns the edge over a team that made its biggest bangs in December and January.

So, yes, it would do the Jayhawks a world of good if that was indeed the real Michael Lee out there Sunday afternoon.

PREV POST

Kansas swimmers finish third at league

NEXT POST

5602Woodling: Did Lee discover himself?