Dime is the premier basketball magazine, covering the NBA, NCAA, High School, Playground and International basketball - as well as sneakers, fashion and music.
Issue link: http://dimemagazine.epubxp.com/i/73806
WHAT'S MY NAME? WORDS. Daniel Marks C.J. McCollum Each year when Rivals, Scout and ESPN make their annual top-150 lists of the best recruits in the country, there are some players who slip through the cracks. Tese guys are the ones programs like Lehigh University must pursue. But sometimes, teams like Lehigh get lucky, and they find a diamond in the rough. Lehigh found that with C.J. McCollum. belong at places like this, people say, they belong at a higher level. But for McCollum, this was the biggest level available, much to the advan- tage of Lehigh coach Dr. Brett Reed. "When I first saw C.J. play," Reed remembers, "I thought to myself this is someone who has a very high basketball IQ and feel for the game with a unique ability to score. However, his physical tools weren't necessarily the most impressive thing as he was a little bit under- sized and a little bit thin. But when you start to look it all over, we knew this kid could play, despite his size, and it was validated by the type of high character kid he was." Upon arriving on campus in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, McCollum immediately seized the starting point guard job, and began mak- ing a name for himself in a way he hadn't been able to in high school. He averaged 19 points a game and won the Patriot League Player of the Year award. Many were surprised. McCollum wasn't. McCollum was part of the loaded high school class of 2009. It featured top-5 NBA Draft Picks like John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins and Derrick Favors, as well as the SEC's leading scorer of the past two years, John Jenkins. Yet none of them led the nation in scoring as a freshman. McCollum, the lightly recruited point guard out of Canton, Ohio, did. McCollum had stood at under 6-0 for much of his high school ca- reer, and his lack of size was an immediate disqualifier for high-major programs. He ul- timately attended Lehigh. Why? "Everybody asks me that question," he says. "They started recruiting me during my junior year. I scored 54 points in my season opener that year and after that Lehigh began recruit- ing me really hard with mailouts, in-home visits, and just constantly staying up to date on me. I really liked the academics, it's a top academic school, and they were my first of- ficial visit and I knew that I would have a chance to play right away and a chance to make it to the NCAA Tournament." Some can't believe McCollum didn't have bigger offers. Lehigh is not a basketball school. Their athletic teams were formerly nicknamed the "Engineers" before becoming the Mountain Hawks. Stars like McCollum don't "I expected to have a big impact," he says. "I worked really hard in the summer prior to coming to school and I put a lot of time in, and I knew that as long as I was given an opportunity that I would be able to come in and play and have an impact. I'm not going to necessarily say that I expected to lead the nation in scoring or anything like that but I knew that I could help my team get to the championship and that as long as coach put me on the floor I could produce because I was definitely prepared." However, the most rewarding part of his fresh- man year was not the individual accolades but the team accomplishments. Lehigh won the Patriot League Championship and faced Kansas in the first round of the NCAA Tour- nament as a No. 16 seed. Getting a chance to play one of the greatest programs in America on the biggest stage in college basketball was something McCollum would never forget. "I remember looking up in the stands and see- ing about 20,000 or so fans with about 18,000 of them for Kansas because we were playing 26 GORMAN FINDLEY/LEHIGH MEDIA RELATIONS