Northeastern’s first CAA regular season title has been driven by an unlikely senior backcourt. Jonathan Lee and Joel Smith come from different parts of the country and different worlds, and they have decidedly different games and personalities. But teams that win do so with togetherness even with differences, and when you look at the success of the Huskies, one place to start is with what Lee and Smith share together.
They share more than meets the eye, especially since they came to Huntington Ave. They have shared playing time, roles and work ethic, and have done much of it together with a bond they forged almost as soon as they arrived in a different world than the one they grew up in.
Smith is a native Texan who spent his early years in Killeen before his family moved to Leander, a suburb of Austin. Lee grew up in the inner city of Flint, Michigan, although he spent a post-graduate year at the Hun School in Princeton, N.J. Smith had never seen snow before coming to Northeastern. Both have found Boston to be a little different from where they grew up, but have likewise embraced it.
They also came to the school differently. Northeastern learned of Smith via a connection to former Husky Eugene Spates, as Collin County Community College looked at Smith but felt he could play at a higher level than junior college. Spates played at Collin County CC before coming to Huntington Ave and having a successful three-year career, so he connected Smith with Northeastern head coach Bill Coen.
Lee, on the other hand, was set to go to Montana State before they lost scholarships, which led him to the post-graduate year at the Hun School. He was in New Jersey for the summer before that year and played well at a Hoop Group event in July, which earned him several scholarship offers from the likes of Vermont and Bucknell, among others, and they included ones to play that fall. But Lee is nothing if not a man of his word, and he told coach Jon Stone beforehand that he would be there for the post-graduate year. Northeastern got to see him there, where he helped them to a MAPL championship and to the edge of a state prep title, losing in the title game on a buzzer-beating tip-in.
Their personalities share differences as well. Most notably, Smith is a soft-spoken young man while Lee is very outgoing and charismatic. The fifth of six kids, Lee has been like that his whole life from being around so many different personalities as a kid, and it shines through off the court as he carries himself like a regular student instead of the Big Man on Campus. Lee was the Homecoming King this past year, noteworthy among other reasons because he was also that in high school. Their differences can even show up on the court, where Smith has often been like a silent assassin, especially with his shooting ability, while Lee is the hyper-competitive vocal leader. They are at the point now where they feed off each other.
“If Jon walks in, you know he’s there,” said Coen. “He has lots of personality. Joel has become more of that. It’s been great to see Joel’s personal confidence go up.”
Freshman year was challenging for both. They didn’t know what the transition to college would be like, although they had their ideas, and in the end it was a humbling experience. Both understood that they were playing behind two all-conference veteran guards in Matt Janning and Chaisson Allen, but no one wants to play 49 and 189 minutes a game in a 33-game season, as Lee and Smith did.
“We started from the bottom, the bottom of the bottom,” Lee reflected. “It was tough. We were sitting a lot, and sometimes we made excuses for ourselves.”
“It’s very humbling,” said Smith. “I didn’t really know how good or how fast the game was, how good the players were, how intelligent they were, especially Matt Janning and Chase (Allen). They were going hard at me and Jon, beating us up every day in practice. We really needed that. I thought I was going to come into college like every other kid, I’m going to get this many minutes, this many points per game. It’s a very humbling experience.”
The idea that Smith would one day be a CAA Player of the Year candidate and Lee would be a nominee for the Senior CLASS Award was probably not one that many entertained at that point. Lee admits that in not getting to play much, he lost his competitive edge at times and didn’t feel like himself as a result.
After their first season, as Coen said, they had a choice to make. They could work to make themselves a big part of things, or they could decide that their freshman year was their destiny. It’s obvious now that they chose the former path, responding to that adversity with self-discipline and high character. They kept believing in what the coaching staff was trying to do.
The guards spent the summer playing whenever and wherever they could. They usually got up at 6 a.m. and spend time working on dribbling with each other, and they spent that summer going all over Boston to play. They became starters in their sophomore year, and last year saw more progress after a lot of growing pains as sophomores. The Huskies got to the quarterfinals of the CAA Tournament, and Lee was a third team All-CAA performer, but they knew they wanted more.
Early this year, with hopes of contending and going out on a good note, the season almost got derailed. Lee got hurt on a play early in practice and limped off. He wasn’t sure how bad it was but was surprised to learn later that he broke his foot. Suddenly, the idea of a storybook senior season looked a little different.
“When Jon got hurt, it was devastating for all of us,” Smith said.
“My world turned upside down,” Lee reflected. “I didn’t know if I’d play. I asked a lot of questions about it.”
Not surprisingly, Lee did everything he could to come back as soon as possible. He was then the best injured teammate he could be, supporting his teammates, pointing things out that he saw – “fighting with them,” as he described. Still, as competitive as he is it was very difficult to not be able to play.
Lee’s injury suddenly put Smith in the position of having to be the primary leader. It was a new challenge, and on top of that he had to be more of a ball handler. There were sure to be growing pains, but now all those 6 a.m. ball handling workouts the two did together might pay off. He redoubled his efforts at improving his ball handling, and as the games came it showed.
Becoming a leader took a little more, but you could see it happen. Coen said that in the past, Lee and Smith would often have Lee doing the talking and Smith having a “what he said” type of response. Now Smith was being more vocal and seeing that he had the respect of his teammates. The stage was set a few months earlier, when the Huskies did a leadership development and team building program known simply as “The Program”, where Smith won the t-shirt for what he did over the two days.
“When that happened, it brought Joel to a new level,” said Coen.
Besides that, while Lee has consistently done a lot of work in the community that has included speaking to kids, Smith has done that more as time has gone along. It’s another example of how Smith has grown into a leader, and not just on the court.
No matter what happens, they will leave as better men than when they arrived. Smith, who has already graduated, hopes to get into coaching after getting a feel for it as a player. The coaching staff has helped him with that as he has been an eager student. Lee, who won the CAA’s Dean Ehlers Leadership Award, is already thinking about his post-basketball career. He is very close to finishing his degree in graphic design and has already seen that there are a lot of directions he can go professionally with that degree. And true to form, he’s constantly networking, because the charismatic kid he was at a young age is still there – now as a young man.
Both guards are now healthy and hope to lead Northeastern to their first CAA championship in Richmond this weekend. After winning their first regular season title, the focus is now on winning in Richmond to reach the NCAA Tournament. It’s been 22 years since Northeastern was in the NCAA Tournament, by far the longest drought in school history (the previous was three years). That would be quite a way for Lee and Smith to go out – and one more thing they will share that is greater than what they don’t.
