Raven Lee Tries To Score EMU To Success
By Chris Morgan
Name: Raven Lee
University: Eastern Michigan University
Year: Sophomore
Height: 6'3''
Weight: 170
Hometown:Detroit, MI
Position: G
The Eastern Michigan University Eagles, a university with very limited sporting success, eked past Miami University in the first round of the MAC conference tournament by a score of 62-61 in overtime. In that game, Raven Lee scored 19 points. He also had zero rebounds and one assist. This has been the way it has gone for Lee, and Eastern Michigan, all season.
There are all-around players in basketball. Some guys are excellent at multiple things. Then, you have your "Swiss army knife" type players. They aren't great at anything, but they do a few different things well. They can help a team in a multitude of ways. Then, there are your one-dimensional players. They only really do one thing. Lee is one of those players, and what he does is score baskets.
Lee, a sophomore out of Detroit, leads the Eagles with 16.4 points per game. For a college player, that is a solid total. Not a lot of guys average that many points at this level. He has not been inefficient while doing it, either. He takes almost 12 shots per game, with 5.4 of his shots being from beyond the arc, but he makes his shots. He's shooting 45.5% from the field, 37.8% from the three-point line, and 78.5% from the free throw line. Scoring is not a problem for Lee, even as an underclassman.
What Lee doesn't do, though, is anything else. He averages 1.8 rebounds and 1.6 assists per game. When he gets the ball, it's going up for a shot. He does average 1.4 steals per game, but otherwise, all he does is shoot, and at least he tends to score. Lee played over 20 minutes a game as a freshman, probably in part because there wasn't a lot of competition on the Eagles, but this year he's averaging 27.3 minutes per game.
Recently, those minutes have gone up as their backs have been against the wall. In EMU's last four games, he's played at least 34 minutes per game. Lee has not scored less than 17 points in any of those games, and three of them have been wins. The one loss, a road game against Western Michigan, he played 38 minutes and had 26 points while making five of his 11 three-point attempts. Lee did what he could.
Lee will be back a couple more years, and will likely continue to lead the offense. Maybe he even has a season averaging 20 points per game in him. There's not likely to be anybody around to stop him.
Chris Morgan has been a diehard Detroit Lions fan through the good (Barry Sanders) and the bad (Matt Millen) and that love has led him to take jobs writing about sports, including as a fantasy sports "expert." His work can be found on Examiner.com. .
