LOS ANGELES -- Marqise Lee's road to recovery since injuring his knee at Arizona State in late September has been slow and steady.
Lee missed just one game before returning to the lineup for the team's trip to South Bend. He then sat out the week after when the team returned home to face Utah.
Since then, Leewas on somewhat of a pitch count. The next two games saw a 10-15 snap ceiling placed on him.
He was efficient against Oregon State going over the 100-yard mark for the first time since the season opener at Hawaii despite the restrictions.
Lee went into the game against Cal thinking he would have more game reps than he did the previous week but wasn't called on to do much in the team's lopsided win. He was fine with the coaching staff's conservative approach.
"I can't question it," Lee said. "I can always tell you 'I'm OK' and then at the end of the day the coach got the final decision on how much you play. Hopefully this game is different."
This week when Stanford comes to town it should be different when it comes to playing time. The restrictions should be removed.
"In a game like this if he can go the whole game, he'll go the whole game," interim head coach Ed Orgeron said. "It all depends."
Orgeron said Lee has looked "pretty good" at the beginning of the week but wants to see how he progresses.
"He seems to get better on Friday," Orgeron joked. "He looks really good on Friday for some reason and Saturday in pregame warmups he looks great."
Lee says he's no longer limited. He feels comfortable being able to do everything on the football field he needs to do to be successful.
"I can do everything," Lee said. "I think this game they're going to let me loose a little bit -- as far as let me get a couple of more plays instead of trying to hold me back too much.
"They won't let me get out of control though."
