SACCO: In five minutes

STUARTS DRAFT

All R.E. Lee needed was five minutes (give or take).

Five minutes to jump out to a 12-2 lead over the Cougars.

Five minutes to force Draft into bad shots.

Five minutes to force Draft into making turnovers.

Five minutes to force the Draft crowd to start screaming, “Come on, white” or “Let’s go, Cougars.”

Five minutes. Five stinking minutes.

Yep, that is all it took for the Paul Hatcher-led Leemen to send their biggest message so far this year. Sure, the decisive win over Liberty-Bedford was all fine and dandy. But for a team saddled in a district that the know-it-alls who know nothing call “weak” — even with an upstart team like the Cougars in the mix – Wednesday night’s 63-47 win was, scratch the whole message thing, more of a package wrapped up in a dapper brown suit with black stripes with a black dress shirt underneath.

“You got to get out of the district first,” said Lee’s JR Gray, who just happened to be wearing the aforementioned ensemble.

His play in the win was just as money as the duds he sported and Gray, a senior that stands somewhere around 6-foot-12, said this team wasn’t done.

If messages and slickly wrapped packages of woe and doom are what people want the Leemen to send other teams, so be it. This Leemen squad won’t tire of licking envelopes, and opponents, to get its point across.

“Nah, that’s what we do,” Gray said. “That’s what we do.”

And in those five minutes that saw Lee look like an all-world team as Draft played all over the place, the Lee big man pulled up from the top of the key to nail a 3 and provided a two-handed rim rattler.

For one side of the Cougar Den it was a five minutes to remember. For the other side it was five minutes they would soon like to forget.

It was five minutes (give or take) that ended with a Terrell Mickens layup, followed by Draft timeout and coach Mike Gale chucking his clipboard onto the hardwood.

“[Lee] got off to a hot start,” Gale said. “I don’t know what it was, I thought we were ready to play.”

Draft made a game of it, closing the gap to 12-11 with a 9-0 run after the timeout, but trying to play catch up with Lee is like trying to land a plane in the Hudson. And, sorry, nobody’s nickname on the Draft team is “Sully.”

“It’s like coach told us,” Gray said, “ ‘Whoever wins this game was in the driver’s seat.’ ”

Message sent to the Southern Valley. Package wrapped.

Speaking of which, who made that suit you’re wearing, Mr. Gray?

“I can’t tell you that, man,” he said.

If they keep playing like they did against Draft, there’s also no telling what this Leemen team is capable of doing.