Arthur Lee may be the hero of Stanford for saving the day, but he’s the goat to the rest of the world for his ridiculous postgame antics.

Lee, the little man of the Stanford Cardinal who is credited for sparking a dramatic last minute comeback against Rhode Island on Sunday, may have almost single- handedly preserved his team’s tournament hopes. Still, don’t feel too proud of the diminutive guard’s toppling of Jim Harrick’s Rhode Island Rams.

The truth is, the Cardinal should have beaten the Rams by 20, and Lee’s postgame antics were an embarrassment to college basketball.

Soon after the final horn, Lee’s teammates hoisted him up on their shoulders, but not before Lee had donned a most menacing of scowls and pranced around the court beating his chest to the thousands of fans in attendance and millions of viewers watching on TV.

Once raised aloft by his own teammates, atop the proverbial high horse, Lee continued to grimace theatrically as he held his nose in the air in a display of unabashed arrogance.

The show went on for minutes in the face of a national audience, and it almost instantly took him from stardom to infamy.

It was the kind of display that made you embarrassed that you rooted for him and his teammates. It left you wondering if Lee has ever once dribbled a basketball or scored one basket with a heart of good sportsmanship.

The display of haughtiness went on so long that it even drew questions from the media at the postgame press conference. What, they asked of Lee, was that attitude all about?

“I don’t know,” the point guard said. “I think I was in the zone at that point. The fact that we came back . . . I was just so elated. It was crazy.”

Let’s be serious, Arthur. We know you were elated, but it wasn’t because of the comeback or the fact that your deserving Stanford teammates are going to the Final Four for the first time in 1942.

It wasn’t because your Stanford team was in the midst of writing its piece of NCAA history, or even that you had the simple satisfaction of leaving everything you had to give out on the court.

No, you were elated because for the first time in your basketball career at Stanford, you felt your shadow was bigger than Brevin Knight’s or Mark Madsen’s or Coach Mike Montgomery’s, and your scowl hoped to inflate that shadow over the entire tournament.

That’s what Lee was doing when, after Tyson Wheeler of Rhode Island missed the critical first two of three free throws, he flashed the choke sign to the Rhode Island bench.

As if the men on the Rhode Island Rams’ team weren’t anguished enough about having their dream ticket to the Final Four snatched from them. No. He had to drive the nail in a little deeper. He had to show them who was boss — NOT the other Stanford men or the coaching staff — NO — it was Arthur Lee, king of the court for the first time in his career, and king of the bush league for all time.

Lee had spent the entire game playing his heart out and living the dream. In the grand scope of the NCAA last-second dramatics, he had the opportunity to write his name next to Michael Jordan’s, Rumeal Robinson’s, or Keith Smart’s, but in reality, he isn’t anything like them. Michael Jordan is gracious in victory and defeat, Keith Smart was surrounded in humility.

Instead, he proved to the world with his brash arrogance and hateful behavior that Arthur Lee is just another no-name street baller with absolutely no modesty.

Lee half-apologized in his postgame press conference by saying that he was just caught up in the emotion of the game.

But by that time, the damage was done. Lee had incensed the entire Rhode Island club with his antics, alienated his teammates who were naturally jubilant after their victory and left the rest of the world wondering how the little point guard could have just come out of nowhere with so much attitude.

Not that Arthur Lee is the only example of athletic arrogance in the world.

He isn’t even the only example of that arrogance in the game. After the loss, Rhode Island Coach Jim Harrick criticized Stanford Coach Mike Montgomery.

He said, “They beat their man to a spot, and then beat him so he can’t get the ball. That’s because Mike Montgomery used to coach at Montana, where, when you go into a bar, you get a beer and a beating.”

And we’ve come to expect the same familiar antics from NBA stars like Alonzo Mourning and the same unabashed criticisms from Karl Malone.

We have resigned ourselves to the truth that athletes are villains as much as they are heroes. And, sometimes, we take their on court heroics with a grain of salt.

We, however, don’t need amateurs like Arthur Lee telling us who’s the best player in the land. It certainly isn’t Lee, and now we will have the next few years to watch Lee vanish into the sea of has-beens whose mediocrity is exceeded only by their arrogance.

Ultimately, the only thing the regional final gave basketball fans was this: the desire to have the opportunity to meet with Lee in a few years when his basketball career is over and remind him of just how far his attitude took him.

Maybe then the scowl will be genuine.

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Aaron Senneff is a senior in computer engineering from Bettendorf.