Kolby Lee Retired?

While looking for online articles about BYU’s win over Oregon tonight, I noticed that Conner Harding helped lead UVU over Pepperdine yesterday. This led me to wonder how Kolby Lee is doing at Dixie St. After not seeing him on the team’s roster, I discovered Lee retired from basketball in August. What happened?

I think he may have realized that he wasn’t a very good player?

All joking aside, he really had no future playing basketball so why not just move forward in more important aspects of his life? He will be successful whatever he does because he is a good person.

Good people don’t always succeed. He’s a hard worker too. Those two things will lead him to success.
He should have stayed at BYU. With Harward down he would help in practice:-)

I couldn’t see him playing for Dixie during the week and driving home for weekends as a newlywed. I think the article is wrong to say he is retiring. It’s a logistics thing going on here. His wife plays for BYU. Maybe he can get on with UVU.

Fish,
Kolby actually announced it on twitter: Robby McCombs on Twitter: “Former BYU big man Kolby Lee announces he is retiring from basketball after transferring to Dixie state this offseason. https://t.co/sbVnTBIqmn” / Twitter

Because he was not accepted into the Masters Program he wanted to get into.

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Not sure that was the case, Anyone who makes it to the D1 level can play ball. He was not NBA material, but the majority of college kids aren’t either. They used basketball as a way to get their education.

I also remember (which might be suspect at best) that he also dealt with some pretty big injuries. All told though, I think he simply wanted to move on.

He was slow and couldn’t jump but he had a wide body and a very quick release on his shot and he was very accurate. He had his moments and made some contributions. I think he was a decent role player for a mid major but not d-1 starting material. He had some nice games and shouldn’t be downgraded as much as he is. BYU has just upgraded the program to the point he didn’t have much of a role anymore. He played quite a bit in 2019-20 and didn’t hurt the team when he played because Pope was careful now he used him. He was part of the rotation early last year and with the emergence of Harward his playing time shrunk to next to nothing. That doesn’t mean he was a bad player. There just weren’t any minutes for him anymore.

True, but “bad” is a relative term. He was definitely capable of playing college basketball but I don’t believe he was a good D-1 player so that would make him a “not good” player… not bad, just not good. When I commented about his “retirement” it was my belief that he really had no future playing basketball or that he wouldn’t play beyond college. Any level of professional was not in the cards IMO. That is all I was alluding to.

I agree with that.

I’ve mentioned before that I saw Kolby Lee play live in the Idaho state championship game (we happened to be in Boise and decided to go just for fun–I didn’t even know who Kolby Lee was at the time). At the game I learned that Coach Rose had signed Lee. I was completely shocked. Everything I know about Lee is that he’s a really good kid, hard worker, etc. but even in high school he looked slow, unathletic and very limited. It’s a real testament to Lee’s work ethic and Coach Pope’s mentoring teaching him the quick one handed shot that allowed Kolby to have the successful moments at BYU that he did. A kid who is a borderline D1 player always has to decide whether to have the glory of a D1 roster spot, or the chance to play a bigger role at a smaller program.

I remember when my son’s best friend got a scholarship to play QB at BSU (he had a great career there), and that friend advocated with the coaches for my son. My son was a tremendous HS player with maybe 20 lower division offers, but he was not a D1 talent. Against his dad’s advice, he followed his friend to BSU with hopes of walking on. After a couple days of summer workouts he called and said, “Dad, I was the fastest guy on the field in HS, but here the linebackers outweigh me by 50 pounds and they are just as fast as I am. This isn’t gonna work.” Great dad moment to be able to say "I told you so :slight_smile: . He transferred to a lower division that had previously offered him and it was a much better fit athletically.

Final note: when football at BSU didn’t work out, my son finished the semester at BSU and quarterbacked an intramural football team with some of his friends from the track team. He would call me after every game sounding as excited as he was in his biggest moments in high school. It made me proud to see him excited about the competition for competition’s sake, even though it was just intramural football. I think there are a lot of kids sitting on D1 benches who would have had way more fun at a smaller school and getting to play.

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bring Lee Back : :cold_sweat:

Wow, just think of the irony. Kolby Lee leaves the team because he didn’t think he would get PT, and as it turns out he’d be the starting center playing 20mpg…

Can he come back? NBA does that but I doubt NCAA will allow that in college sports this is too bad. Would be nice to have Colby Lee back

What’s to stop him, he still has edibility. It was as thought but with big bodies, he could be waaaay out of shape.

I can’t believe you guys are actually calling for Lee to come back…

how desperate can it get?

I know, right??? Who would of thunk that we would loose our two veteran centers to start the year?
Foos and Atiki will be great but until they mature, I would ask Lee to fill in in a heartbeat.

I’m with you there. An experienced big body is better than Aitiki at this point. Although, I want home to play as much as possible.

Perhaps we are desperate. You don’t think much of Harward.

We don’t know if Harward will be coming back this year.

Wrong as usual. Like Aro said, we don’t even know if he will play this season. If he does, what kind of condition do you think he will be in?, playing against Timme and Holmgren who have played a dozen or more games.

It would be so nice if you put some thought into your posts, once in awhile, instead of firing off the first thing that pops into your head.