[I’m gonna spend a couple paragraphs breaking my “Don’t write about Austin Peay” rule. Skip ahead if you must, but just know you’re hurting my feelings.]
When I worked at Austin Peay, Terry Taylor was the best player I saw don the uniform.
Not basketball player—player, full stop. Pick a sport. That doesn’t sound impressive? In other sports, I watched Olympians, World Cup players, future pros, the whole shebang. Terry was either as good or better. He owns or wound up painfully close to just about every relevant school record we could find, he won every award we could think to nominate him for and quite frankly took on mythical proportions by the time all was said and done.
He also did this despite never advancing farther in the conference tournament than the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament semifinals, a shame that will follow me, personally, through the rest of my life even if I barely had anything to do with it. I consider Terry Taylor—by just about any metric you wish to find one of the dozen or so best players in league history—never making an OVC Tournament title game to be nothing short of a war crime.
But that is, for good and ill, part of college basketball. Some legends are destined not to hoist hardware or even get particularly close. In Terry’s case, his first two seasons put the best team around him, his junior season went to hell thanks to some untimely injuries and his final campaign was the glorious shitshow that was 2020-21 aka Covid-Ball. I suppose he could have come back for his fifth season but considering he was already on the short list of best players in program and league history, there was little to nothing left for him to prove and the chance of injury was too great a risk to tempt fate.
So now he’s in the NBA, which I would consider confirmation he made the right choice.
Local legends dot the college basketball landscape. These hardwood gods plied their trade, perhaps at a mid-major near you, for any number of reasons but the result always comes back to one thing: it’s a real shame we never got to see them get a March attempt at slaying a dragon in the NCAA Tournament.
So with that in mind, I present to you the Terry Taylor All-Stars—players you may not know much about but who indelibly made their mark.
Elijah Pepper, UC Davis — First came to my attention in high school thanks to my friend Luke, who covers the sports beat around Pepper’s hometown of Selah, Washington. Several Dr. Pepper jokes were exchanged in text/Twitter. A three-time All-Big West selection, Pepper uses his frame (6-4, 200) to bully smaller guards and can blow by the larger lads who attempt to stick with him. Last spotted cutting the entire heart out of Long Beach State by hitting the tying free-throws at the end of regulation, the tying layup in the first overtime and the winning free-throws in the extra extra period to secure a needed win for the Aggies.
Closest Chance at the Dance: Made the Big West Semifinals in 2021; Pepper had 13 points in a 71-55 loss to UC Santa Barbara.
Taevion Kinsey, Marshall — The leading scorer in Thundering Herd history, Kinsey was the 2023 Sun Belt Player of the Year after averaging 22.1 ppg on 54.4 percent shooting. A classic ‘tweener at 6-5, Kinsey is a throwback in that he isn’t much for 3-point attempts, and actually took less as his career went along—the 1.5 3-pointers per game he put up in 2022-23 was a career low. He and Andrew Taylor combined to form one of the more high-octane backcourts in college hoops in 2023, with both averaging more than 20 per night. Might have been the hardest-working man in college basketball this year; according to Evan Miyakawa’s metrics, led college basketball in meaningful possessions played on both ends of the floor.
Closest Chance at the Dance: Probably this year, which ended with the Herd going 24-8 but flaming out in the Sun Belt quarterfinals. In Kinsey’s freshman campaign, Marshall fell to Southern Miss in the CUSA quarterfinals, but this team was superior to that one.
Jordan Dingle, Penn — The anti-Kinsey, Dingle happily bombed away from deep with nearly eight attempts per night. He was the NCAA’s second-leading scorer this year and earned Ivy League Player of the Year, putting up 23.6 per night on 46.2 percent from the floor. Will I revive Future Lives of Ivy Leaguers for Jordan Dingle this offseason? Mind your business and go to the next entry.
Closest Chance at the Dance: Definitely this year. Last year, an underwhelming Penn team got dumped in its opening game at Ivy Madness. The year before, the Ivy canceled the season; prior to that, COVID canceled the tournament.
Dillon Jones, Weber State — In the spirit of my man Terry, what we have here is a 6-6 big man a handful of boards from averaging a double-double for his career. Led the country in defensive rebounds per game… by nearly two (10.1 for him, 8.3 for Clemson’s Hunter Tyson). Led the NCAA with a 35.6 percent defensive rebounding rate, which seems like it should be fiction and somehow isn’t. Might’ve become a rebounding savant thanks to his older brother basically press-ganging him into becoming his personal rebounding machine one summer. As origin stories go, it’s not bad!
Closest Chance at the Dance: This year, Jones and the Wildcats lost to eventual champion Montana State in double overtime in the Big Sky semifinals. Last year, Jones and the Wildcats… lost to eventual champion Montana State in the Big Sky semifinals.
Yuri Collins, Saint Louis — Led Division I in assists this year with 10.1 per night. Also led Division I in assists last year. And was 10th the year before. You get the idea. Dropped 20 dimes against Tennessee State in December. A top-25 guy in terms of career assists. NIL deal in St. Louis with Snarf Sandwiches, which is fun to say whether the sandwiches are good or not. Lest you think all he can do is pass to better players, he’s one of two guys this century to average a double-double in points and assists. The other was Ja.
Closest Chance at the Dance: The Billikens have made back-to-back trips to the A-10 semifinals and embark on another attempt at getting over the hump Thursday against George Mason. While Pepper and Dingle are definitely still alive, Collins is the one with the best chance to play his way off the list this year.