Player Profiles: C.J. McCollum - Lehigh
This season, College Chalktalk will be highlighting players from around the nation in both BCS and non-BCS conferences who are deserving of ink. Here, we begin in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, as Doug Potter profiles a Patriot League guard on his way to re-writing the record books.
* * *
You might not be familiar with C.J. McCollum, but it's about time you are because he can flat out play. Though he stands 6-foot 3 and weighs about 180 pounds, outside of a Blake Griffin-esque dunk, there is nothing McCollum can't do on a basketball court.
The Canton, Ohio, native has been in the basketball spotlight for a good portion of his playing career. At Glen Oak High School (teammates with Kosta Koufos - Denver Nuggets), he finished as the all-time leading scorer in school history (1,405) and also collected the award for 2009 Ohio Gatorade High School Player of the Year.
He continued his success at Lehigh University and became the first player in Patriot League history to be named the Conference POY and Rookie of the Year in the same season. He led all freshmen in scoring (19.1 PPG) in 2009-2010 and upped his average to 21.8 points per contest last season. He can score in bunches as shown by his five games last year with 30+ points, and the free-throw line truly is a charity stripe for McCollum, who led the league with an 84.5% figure last season.
But McCollum takes pride in other aspects of his game too. Despite his lack of size, McCollum is a superb rebounder. His 7.8 boards per game during his sophomore year is a stat more commonly associated with a power forward. In 10 games last year he had double-digit rebounds, highlighted by a 31 point, 15 rebound performance in a 94-90 victory over Colgate on Feb. 16th, 2011.
So entering his junior season, what can we expect from McCollum as he leads the Mountain Hawks?
Scoring.
Though McCollum is no one-trick pony, with the graduation of four seniors from the 2010-11 squad, he will have to shoulder most of the scoring load. A hard-worker adept at creating his own shot, McCollum has a unique ability to score from anywhere on the court in a variety of ways. He's already torched the nets for 1,308 points in just two seasons, and now just 916 points separate McCollum from the Patriot League all-time scoring record.
"McCollum is the type of guy that you have to gameplan for and he's been that way since the moment he stepped on campus," said an opposing coach. "The game is so slow for him... and sometimes it will look like he's only operating at three-quarter speed, and in an instant he'll blow right by a defender."
While it remains to be seen whether success finds its way to the Mountain Hawks as a team in 2011-2012, C.J. McCollum will undoubtedly be accepting some awards come April, especially with reigning Patriot League Player of the Year Mike Muscala (still at Bucknell) serving as an additional form of personal motivation for this talented junior.
* * *
