South Korea’s Lee Hyun-jung. FIBA PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines–South Korea’s Lee Hyun-jung is someone Gilas Pilipinas should look out for when the two teams lock horns in Wednesday’s opening night of Fiba Asia Cup Qualifiers’ third window at Clark Freeport.
This came from Ricardo Ratliffe, now Ra Gun-a, the visitors’ well-traveled naturalized player who also knows a thing or two about Philippine basketball.
“Look out for Lee Hyun-jung,” he said in a Samahang Bakstbol ng Pilipinas video interview provided to media outlets on Monday.
Ratliffe hopes to leave much to the imagination, adding “he played for Davidson College in the (United States).”
Lee has been playing for the Wildcats, a US NCAA Division I program, for two years now. And he has proven to be more and more of a force within that squad, hiking his averages over the course of that period.
Lee averaged 8.4 points during his rookie year at Davidson. He recently registered 13.5 to go with 4 rebounds and 2.5 assits through 22 games played, seeing action for nearly 30 minutes a contest.
At just 20, Lee, like many in Tab Baldwin’s Gilas pool, is being groomed to as one of the building blocks of South Korea’s senior cage program and in no way should he be considered a novice, as he has been a fixture in many national youth teams.
If anything, Lee is raring to go, even hinting at his familiarity with the Philippines’ storied cage history with his homeland.
“I feel the Philippines has always been a good team. They’re great with one-on-one and like good on team basketball,” he said in a separate interview.
“So I’m excited about it. I’m looking forward to playing against them,” the 6-foot-7 swingman said.
Oh, and is he is also looking to test his chops against one of Gilas’ youngsters.
“Especially against Kai Sotto. He’s a star. I just want to play against him,” Lee said.