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New Jersey point guard Taylor commits to Kansas
By J. BRADY McCOLLOUGHThe Kansas City Star
For someone who is addicted to treats like Taylor, Tuesday served up a mixed bag. In the morning, Taylor, a point guard from Jersey City, N.J., gave an oral commitment to play basketball at Kansas. In the afternoon, he went to the dentist.
Root canal.
“It’s my third,” Taylor said. “I’m used to them. I just eat a lot of candy.”
Three root canals already? Taylor, a 6-foot-3 point guard, gets an A-plus for toughness. In fact, that quality just might be Taylor’s most important. Taylor says that KU coach Bill Self and assistant coach Joe Dooley compared his game to Russell Robinson’s.
Like Robinson, Taylor is a New York City area player whose job all season was to distribute the ball and make his teammates better. Taylor led St. Anthony High School to a 32-0 record and the mythical high school national championship. Also like Robinson, Taylor chose the Jayhawks over Georgia Tech.
“I’ll take that comparison,” said Taylor, who visited KU last week. “I knew going down there I was going to speak to Russ. I asked him about how it was adjusting coming from the city to Lawrence, Kansas, where it’s not a city at all. He said, ‘It’s going to be an adjustment going anywhere.’ ”
Robinson’s sales pitch wasn’t the only reason that Taylor, the No. 77 overall player and the No. 11 point guard in the class according to Rivals.com, decided to become the seventh member of KU’s 2008 recruiting class. Taylor originally signed a letter of intent with Marquette in the fall, but when Tom Crean left Marquette for Indiana, the school released him from his letter.
“Coming from a high school like mine where basketball was the biggest thing,” Taylor said, “it made sense to go to a school like Kansas where it’s the biggest thing.
“Their leading scorer was (Brandon) Rush, and he had like 13 or something per game. That’s how our high school team was. Playing like that, I feel more comfortable.”
With Taylor’s commitment, the Jayhawks are now one over their limit of 12 scholarships. But if either Darrell Arthur or Mario Chalmers decides to stay in the NBA draft, KU will be even.
Taylor will be the fourth player in next year’s five-man freshman class with New Jersey connections — power forward Quintrell Thomas is from Elizabeth, N.J., and twins Marcus and Markieff Morris attend Apex Academies in Pennsauken, N.J.