Do you remember what you did or where you were the first day you were no longer a teen-ager? Michael Lee always will.

Lee turned 20 on Monday, and to celebrate his birthday the 6-foot-3 Kansas University sophomore nailed three crucial free throws in the last 27 seconds to help the Jayhawks shake off pesky Missouri, 76-70, in Allen Fieldhouse.

“I’m out of my teen-age years now,” Lee said. “I’m a grown man.”

On hand for Lee’s birthday was his mom, Cynthia Lee. She came here from Portland, Ore., for the Arizona game on Jan. 25 and stuck around for her son’s birthday. Before the game she made him cupcakes and gave him a couple of shirts as presents.

And what did his teammates give him?

“During warm-ups they gave me the ball more than they usually do,” Lee said with a grin. “They said, ‘These are your presents.'”

And then, when it was nitty-gritty time, Lee stepped to the free-throw line and all but presented the Jayhawks with a victory.

Team player that he is, Lee uttered the obligatory: “It was present enough just getting a win tonight.”

Curiously, Lee was on the floor late because Aaron Miles, his old high school teammate and the player whose coattails he rode to Kansas — was all but chewing on a bone while sitting next to coach Roy Williams for nearly the last 10 minutes.

Miles sat so much — 21 minutes — that Lee wound up playing a career-high 28 minutes.

“I’m probably more tired than I’ve ever been,” Lee said, “but I stuck it out. All those timeouts helped me a lot. I sucked a lot of water over there.”

If he was tired, why didn’t he give the tired signal? Didn’t he know he was supposed to hold his right hand clenched in a fist above his head to let Williams know he was gassed?

“I know the tired signal,” he said. “I just don’t give it.”

In late January and early February — the dreaded dog days of the college basketball season — good teams have to have one or two players step up.

For some reason or reasons, Miles and Jeff Graves and Keith Langford were becalmed in the horse latitudes Monday night, waiting for a breeze that never came. Miles, Graves and Langford combined for 10 of the Jayhawks’ 12 turnovers and scored only 16 points among them.

Normally, in a close game, a coach likes to have his starters on the floor down the stretch because the book says you should win or lose with your best players on the floor. Williams did have Langford in there, but Miles and Graves were replaced by Lee and Bryant Nash, who, like Lee, contributed seven points.

In retrospect, having Lee and Nash on the floor for so long with the outcome in doubt would have left Williams open to second-guessing if Missouri had stolen this one.

But Missouri, a team that relies on rebounding, defense and three-point goals to overcome its turnover-prone halfcourt offense, couldn’t, and Lee could.

“He did great,” said senior Kirk Hinrich, who was great himself with 24 points, eight assists and just one turnover. “He (Lee) does things most people don’t even realize. He does the little things.”

One, two, three … it looks like we’re going to see more and more of Mr. Lee. No one is ready to dub him Super Sub or anything like that, but Lee remains the Jayhawks’ sixth man with Wayne Simien still sidelined, and he seems to be blossoming.

“I think I’ve taken a lot of big steps,” Lee said. “But I’ve got a long way to go. The coaches remind me I really don’t have it made.”

Maybe not yet, but Lee did take a big step on Monday night, maybe even a giant one.

.