By: Katie Zigelman, News Staff
Sophomore Jonathan Lee scored 51 points in the last three basketball games, including a career-high 25 points against in the Huskies 91-80 win over Virginia Commonwealth University Feb. 2. His performance has earned him Huntington News Player of the Week honors.
So far this season, Lee has led the team in scoring four times this season, and twice in rebounding. His playing time has also increased from last year to an average of 28.5 minutes per game. Lee talked about how this increase in playing time has affected his confidence as a basketball player.
“It has boosted it tremendously,” Lee said.
It was this confidence that helped Lee in his career-record breaking performance against VCU.
“I got the confidence from my teammates,” Lee said. “The first half wasn’t great for me but I knew that they needed me the second half so I just started taking more shots.”
He scored four points in the first half and 19 in the second.
The Flint, MI. native has been playing basketball since the sixth grade. After receiving All-League honors three straight years and Most Valuable Player twice at Flint Carman-Ainsworth High School and The Hun School of Princeton, Lee chose NU over Cornell University. He said he chose the Huskies for the coaching staff and the higher level of basketball.
“When I came to visit Northeastern, the guys [on the basketball team] were great,” he said. “They made me feel like I was part of the team.”
Lee, at the time, was planning on studying architecture and wanted to attend school in a city.
“Northeastern had it all,” he said.
He said that the hardest part about transitioning from high school to college was playing at a consistent level, as well as practicing harder.
Since starting at Northeastern, Lee has been working on his offensive game, taking care of the ball, his 3-point shot and his pull-up jump shot.
“I’ve always been a defensive player so I’ve really been working on my offensive game,” Lee said.
The Huskies have won five of the past six games, the most recent was a 82-78 win over Towson Wednesday. Lee added 16 points in the win.
“We’ve got all the confidence in the world right now,” he said. “We won five out of our last six games and now know what we need to do to win. We have the best shooting we have had all season and we just have to keep rolling with it. We’ve got each other’s back.”
Lee is a graphic design major, and in his spare time, he loves to draw.
He has not yet decided what he wants to focus on in graphic design for a career. He said perhaps he will play professional basketball like his brother, Kevin Wallace, who played professional basketball in Brighton, England.
