Article recently in the Kansas City Star about the maturation process for Missouri forward Leo Lyons, who has helped his team each the Elite 8 with a victory last night over Memphis. It has not always been easy for Lyons, who has admitted he was lazy when he first arrived at Missouri and didn't like being coached:
He despised getting yelled at. And Mike Anderson yelled at him constantly, every day, screamed that he was lazy, shouted that he was in the wrong place, howled that he was not going to play unless he started working. No coach had ever yelled at Leo before, not at any of his four high schools, not his freshman year at Missouri, not ever. Maybe they were afraid to yell at him, afraid to lose him. Leo Lyons was a sensitive soul. He had a long body and a light shooting touch and big basketball dreams, really big dreams, but there was something soft about him, too.
“People let me do what I want,” he says plainly.
Anderson saw a player who did not go to class (Anderson suspended him for missing classes), a player who made bad decisions off the court (Anderson suspended him again for missing curfew in the well-chronicled incident at Club Athena) and a player who did not always think first. (Anderson suspended Lyons again after he was pulled over for driving with his lights off and other traffic violations were discovered.)
Anderson also saw a player who was a bit too goofy (One game he forgot to wear his jersey under his warm-up jacket), and a player who brooded after being yelled at. (“No, he did not respond too well at first,” Anderson says.)
Most of all, though, he saw a player who not only did not play hard but did not even seem to realize that he was not playing hard. (Anderson benched him repeatedly for it.)
“Leo’s a good young man,” Anderson says. “But young men have to learn how to be men.”
Anderson smiles.
Anderson smiles.
“It took a little bit longer with Leo.”
When the season ended, Lyons declared for the NBA draft, but quickly realized that he would not get drafted high enough and decided to return for his senior year. And almost immediately he saw that something had changed. He noticed how hard his teammates were working in the summer months. He heard them talking about putting together a season they would always remember.
Then, Mike Anderson asked him to be one of the team captains.
“People look up to you, Leo,” he would remember Anderson saying.
And suddenly he felt … different. He had never been asked to be a leader before. That’s not to say that everything went perfectly after that; it only works that way in the movies. Lyons still had his good moments and his bad ones. He still found himself on the bench listening to Anderson’s soliloquies about keeping his head in the game and playing hard.
But his good moments were sensational. He scored 30 against Baylor, grabbed 15 rebounds at Colorado and in a three-game Big 12 stretch, he made 28 of 29 free throws. He took over games for brief stretches.
“The thing that has impressed me is how much better he has played on defense,” Anderson says. “He has really put his heart into that.”
“The hardest part to me is that you have to make those second and third efforts,” Lyons says. “You’re used to seeing guys who make one hard effort on defense. But we feed off each other, you might have to make five efforts in one defensive play.
“It took me awhile to learn that.”
Lyons may have had the most complete game of his career against Cornell in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. He scored, rebounded, defended, handled the ball. He left his teammates talking about how far the Tigers can go in the tournament if he keeps playing like that. He left Cornell coach Steve Donahue in awe.
“A senior like that, plays at a great pace, very skilled, yet tough,” Donahue says. “When he misses his shot, he has the ability to chase it down. He does it against all competition. That’s what makes him really good.”
And what did Lyons think of his game? “I’ve played like that before,” he says. “But I’m just so much more mature now. That’s the difference.”
