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Reports: Drexel's Damion Lee to graduate, transfer

03/30/2015, 4:30pm EDT

By Josh Verlin

Drexel redshirt junior Damion Lee, who was on pace to become one of the school’s all-time leading scorers, will instead graduate from the school in June and transfer for his final season of college eligibility, according to multiple reports.

The news was first reported by Scout.com’s Evan Daniels.

Lee, a 6-foot-6, 200-pound wing out of Baltimore, came to Drexel in 2011 after a postgraduate year at St. Thomas More (Conn.). He earned CAA Rookie of the Year honors that season, averaging 12.0 ppg and 4.4 rpg to help the Dragons make the 2012 CAA championship, where they fell just short of beating VCU.

He broke out as a sophomore to become one of the best players in all of mid-major basketball, averaging 17.1 ppg and 5.1 rpg in 2012-13, but a torn ACL ended his junior year just five games into the season.

Even though he wasn’t at full strength this year, Lee had easily his best collegiate season yet, averaging 21.4 ppg and 6.1 rpg, shooting 47.9 percent overall and 38.5 percent on his 3-point attempts. The All-CAA First Team selection ended up fifth in the entire nation in scoring before breaking his right hand just four games before the end of the season.

The 1,538 points that Lee scored in just over three years of competition had him already 10th in school history, just 670 points behind Michael Anderson for the school’s all-time lead. Had he stayed for his senior year and stayed healthy, he would have certainly ended up in the top three, and with a good chance of making a run at Anderson’s record.

At the time of his departure, he’s also eighth in the school’s history in made 3-pointers (196) and is the school’s all-time leader in foul shooting percentage (84.2).

Instead, Lee is likely to hear from a vast array of high-major programs who could utilize his size, experience and outside shooting ability.

While Lee enjoyed tremendous personal success at Drexel, the Dragons had struggled to find the same level of success that they had in his freshman season, when they went 29-7 and reached the NIT quarterfinals. In the years since, with injuries playing a large role, Drexel went just 40-51 (.439), without a single CAA Tournament win during that span.

This past year, Drexel went 11-19 overall, with a 9-9 mark in CAA play, but were limited to as few as seven scholarship players on numerous occasions due to injuries.

Drexel coach Bruiser Flint will add some scoring punch in the form of transfer guards Ahmad Fields (Utah) and Miles Overton (Wake Forest), but it’ll be tough for either to replicate the kind of success Lee brought to the Daskalakis Athletic Center over the last few seasons.

Lee’s departure also leaves another redshirt junior, Tavon Allen, as the only scholarship senior on the roster next year; Allen, a 6-7 wing, averaged 11.2 ppg but shot just 31.5 percent from the floor.

Allen, Fields and Overton are just three of seven guards who project to be on the roster. Redshirt freshman Major Canady was the projected starter at point guard before a broken ankle kept him out the entire season, and true freshman Rashann London got the nod in his place. Another true freshman, shooting guard Sammy Mojica, came on strong at the end of last season, and they’ll all be joined by the team’s only current incoming freshman, guard Terrell Allen.

CoBL will have more on this story shortly