From South Korea to Australia to Davidson: Hyunjung Lee’s journey never lost sight of home
Hyunjung Lee’s journey to Davidson was a long one — even by the standards already set by Wildcats basketball coach Bob McKillop’s longstanding practice of scouring the globe for international players.
But how Lee arrived as the Wildcats’ first scholarship player from Asia involved a little home cooking.
One of six international players on Davidson’s roster, Lee, a 6-foot-7 wing, has quickly established himself as one of the Atlantic 10’s top freshmen, averaging 8.5 points and 3.5 rebounds. He makes 41.2 percent of his 3-pointers and was named the conference’s rookie-of-the-week earlier this month.
“I feel great about that,” Lee said of the A-10 award. “It’s an honor, but I think I need to get better at helping my teammates. They’re always pushing me. But they’ll tell me I’m the greatest shooter in the A-10. I don’t know about that, but I’m working on that.”
Lee, who scored a career-high 20 points against Virginia Commonwealth on Feb. 7, speaks English fluently, but didn’t begin to learn the language until 2018, when he was enrolled at the NBA Global Academy near Canberra, Australia — thousands of miles from his home in Yongin City, South Korea.
Lee grew up in a basketball family — his mother, Jeong A Seong, played on South Korea’s 1984 Olympics silver-medal team and guarded U.S. star Cheryl Miller in the gold-medal game; his father, Yunhwan Lee, is a longtime high school coach in Yongin City.
It was from Canberra that McKillop first heard about Lee. Chris Clunie, the Davidson athletic director and a former Davidson player, was one of the global academy’s founders.
One of the the directors of the academy noticed Lee thanks to how well he shot the ball and his innate knowledge of the game and brought that to the attention of McKillop and associate head coach Matt McKillop.
Bob and Matt got a chance to see him play for the first time during a Basketball Without Borders event (another Clunie brainchild) at last season’s Final Four in Minneapolis.
“That’s when we knew we really wanted to recruit him,” Bob McKillop said.
A few weeks later, Matt was on a plane to Australia.
“We wanted to be certain he knew how important he was to our recruiting,” Matt McKillop said. “He was very skilled, but we didn’t realize how good a shooter he was until I went down there. But I saw that he’s an awesome cutter and passer and has a great motor. The way he goes for rebounds showed how great his instincts are.”
Lee returned to the United States to take two recruiting visits — to programs that produced the Golden State Warriors’ “Splash Brothers” backcourt.
“I knew about Davidson because Steph Curry was from there and also Bob McKillop,” Lee said. “That was my dream. But I also visited Washington State, Klay Thompson’s school. But I decided on Davidson because of how unselfish they are. They play smart basketball and are a good fit for me.”
It hasn’t taken long for Lee to become acclimatized to Davidson. His parents and older sister Lina recently visited for a few weeks recently. That being said, he still eats with chopsticks, something that teammate (and Austrian) Luka Brajkovic found funny at first.
Lee also takes an enormous amount of pride in the South Korean movie “Parasite,” which recently won four Oscars, including best picture.
“Everyone’s talking about ‘Parasite’ on campus,” said Lee, who said there are a number of South Korean students at Davidson.
Said redshirt freshman guard Mike Jones: “There’s some things that are new to Lee. He’s done well with the language barrier. If I learned English two years ago, I don’t know if I’d be where he is now.”
Lee, who averages 20.3 minutes per game, is one of 40 international players McKillop has had in his 31 seasons at Davidson. This year’s team also includes Brajkovic, Iceland’s Jon Axel Gudmundsson, Denmark’s David Kristensen, England’s Nelson Boachie-Yiadom and Sweden’s David Czerapowicz (who’s out for the season with an injury). Sam Mennenga, a forward from New Zealand, is part of the 2020 recruiting class and is already on campus and practicing with the team.
Gudmundsson said that as a player from Asia, Lee might have taken longer to get used to the American college game than European players might.
“I don’t know a whole lot about it, but when he’s in Australia and Asia, he’s playing against kids his age,” said Gudmundsson, last season’s Atlantic 10 player of the year. “European people play with adults when they come up. That gives you experience to get ready for playing in college (in the U.S.).
Bob McKillop compares Lee to former George Washington star Yuta Watanabe, a Japanese player who was drafted by the Memphis Grizzlies in 2018.
“Yuta was sensational and that’s because he became more and more familiar with European and American players,” McKillop said. “I’m not saying (Lee) will become an NBA player, but there are a lot of similarities between the two, and beyond just the fact that they’re both from Asia.”
Lee and Boachie-Yiadom, a sophomore forward from London, have played key roles in a recent stretch during which Davidson (13-11, 7-5 A-10) has won six of eight games, including a thorough 93-64 thumping of St. Bonaventure on Friday.
Bob McKillop said Lee’s improvement has come mostly on the defensive end and how he prepares for his opponents, which include last-place Saint Joseph’s (4-21, 0-12) on Tuesday in Philadelphia.
“You can see it in the comfort level he feels,” said McKillop, adding that Lee has overcome another language barrier. “He’s now understanding the tendencies of our opponents, which was all Greek to him when he got here.”
Davidson at Saint Joseph’s
When: Tuesday, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Hagan Arena, Philadelphia.
Watch: CBS Sports Network.
Listen: 730-AM.
This story was originally published February 17, 2020 at 1:17 PM.