-Considering that Taylor played 36 minutes and shot 108 attempts, he averaged exactly 3 shot attempts per minute. With a 35-second shot clock in college basketball, that's crazy. Needless to say, Taylor dominated the ball the whole game.
-A year ago, in November of 2011, Griffin Lentsch of Grinnell College, a current teammate of Taylor, broke the NCAA DIII points in a game record with 89 points in a win against Principia. In last night's game, Lentsch scored 7 points in 14 minutes off-the-bench. You would think that scoring 89 points would have made him a lock-starter for the rest of his career there, but apparently not.
-Before that, in February of 1998, another Grinnell College player, Jeff Clement, set the DIII record for points in a game with 77 points in a win over Illinois College.
-Before that, in 1994, Steve Diekmann, also of Grinnell College, broke the DIII record for points in a game with 69 points.
-Taylor made an astonishing 27 three-pointers off of 71 attempts from long-range. That calculates to about 38%, which doesn't sound great, but considering that there were 71 attempts involved and this was in a collegiate basketball game, that's really good.
-Taylor's assist to turnover ratio was terrible. He had 0 assists and 6 turnovers.
-He also had 3 steals and 3 rebounds, which no one cares about.
-You would think that since he scored 138 points, he had to have made more than half of his field goal attempts. Nope. He went 52-for-108 from the field. Of course, 48% from the field is still great, especially since he scored 138 points!
-Taylor is a 5'10" white guy. That makes this feat even more spectacular.
-The second-leading scorer of the game, sophomore David Larson of Faith Baptist Bible, scored 70 points. Larson is barely receiving any credit or recognition for arguably an equally-great performance. Larson's shot selection was stellar and he shot 34-for-44 from the field. That calculates to 77% from the field compared to Taylor's 48%. 66 of Larson's 70 points from last night were layups, according to USA Today. Larson's 70-point performance has been mentioned/acknowledged on TV, but he hasn't actually been referred to by name from what I've seen. Let's give some Larson some credit, it'll cheer him up considering that his team is now 0-5 this season.
-Faith Baptist Bible had a crazy-high amount of turnovers in the game: 49. That's more than 1 turnover per minute. That's pretty bad. Eric Young led the game with 16 turnovers in 33 minutes. Tyler Betz turned the ball over 15 times in 36 minutes. Both of those players were on Faith Baptist Bible.
-On the Faith Baptist Bible Eagles official website, the headline for last night's game was "Larson Has Record Setting Night." I thought it was funny that they didn't mention "Taylor" or "138 points" in the title to the article.
-Grinnell won the game 179-104 in a blowout. Grinnell is now 3-0 (undefeated), while Faith Baptist Bible has an 0-4 (winless) record. Faith Baptist is 0-8 this season if you count exhibition games.
-Taylor's performance has earned praise from Kobe Bryant and Kevin Durant:
Bryant: "Wow ... Really? Wow. That's impressive. That's crazy. I don't care what level you're at. Scoring 138 points in pretty insane. ... That's incredible. ... That's amazing."
Durant: "Jack Taylor you deserve a shot of Jack Daniels after that performance lol...wow" (via Twitter)Here are some highlights from the game (in case your haven't seen them already):
-Did anyone else notice that the shots Taylor was making were all contested and off-the-dribble? Those 138 points weren't from breakaway layups, free-throw attempts (he was 7-10 from the line), and uncontested shots. He made some difficult shots.
-Does this 138-point outburst by Taylor make him a serious NBA prospect? I'm not sure. It's obvious that some NBA executives and general managers will take a look at Taylor now, but last night was only one game. Considering that he is 5'10" scorer, he would obviously be at a disadvantage in the NBA. Who knows? Maybe this is just the beginning for Taylor. I'm rooting for him to succeed.
-3 games into the season, Taylor currently averages 61.7 points per game.
Two days ago, I wouldn't have thought that my next blog entry would be about some player from a D3-school named Jack Taylor. That's how quickly Taylor has jumped onto the radar of basketball fans country-wide.
For more information and footage, read/watch:
-Grinnell College guard shatters scoring record with 138 points in a game - sports.yahoo.com (The Dagger)
-Grinnell's Taylor pours in NCAA-record 138 points - d3hoops.com
-Jack Taylor Player Profile - pioneers.grinnell.edu
-Box Score - d3hoops.com
-Video of game in full - stretchinternet.com
-The quietest 70 points in college basketball history (Larson) - USA Today
-Grinnell player (Lentsch) breaks D-III scoring record - d3hoops.com (2011)
-Clement sets single-game scoring record - d3hoops.com (1998)
Have any thoughts on Jack Taylor's crazy performance last night? Leave a comment below and tell me what you think.
No comments:
Post a Comment