West Regional | Edge: UConn-Missouri
GLENDALE, Ariz. -- So you want to know how Missouri's group of junkyard Tigers got to these dizzying heights? You want to know how two transfers, some raw freshmen and a long-lost relative of Chris Paul (wink, wink) -- none of them taller than 6-feet-9 -- got to the Elite Eight?
You go right to the source: Missouri's Philosopher King. Senior guard Zaire Taylor's handle is as deft as his pen. While leading the Big 12 in assist-to-turnover ratio, Taylor is ready to publish a book of poems tentatively titled "Smoking Ls: Love, Lust, Lies and Life."
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| Taylor led the Big 12 in assist-to-turnover ratio. (AP) |
"I would never quit," Taylor said. "Just like in basketball being down 10 with two minutes left, that's when you really start playing."
Taylor has never stopped playing. At 22, he is a persecuted, brilliant, ebullient soul. As a 12-year-old growing up in Staten Island, N.Y., Taylor knew he wanted to play basketball. That's routine enough stuff. But a few years later he found himself without a school and a home. Abandoned by a roommate who stuck him with rent after leaving Delaware, Taylor couldn't pay and became technically homeless for a period of weeks two years ago.
"Anybody who knows me, knows I can sleep anywhere," Taylor said. "It helped make me a man. In life, you can't be ashamed of any of your experiences. Everything I've done and went through made me the man that I am. I'm pretty happy with the way I've turned out so far."
When not staying with friends during those treacherous weeks, he simply curled up in the open-24-hours Delaware computer lab for three or four days. His lifeline was Missouri. An old friend playing at Missouri, Keon Lawrence, recommended him to Mizzou coach Mike Anderson.
It was addition by subtraction. Lawrence, somewhat of a ball hog, went on to transfer to Seton Hall. Taylor became a defensive stopper, while also hitting game-winning shots against Texas and Kansas within a five-day period in February.
"When he first came he was a skinny, little wimpy kid," Anderson said. "The first thing I saw, he came in had a big belt on, had 'Cash Money' on it. I told him, 'Boy, you need to get rid of that belt if you come by here.'"
Anderson, who runs Missouri's program a bit like a boot camp, would have none of it. If Taylor was going to be part of the program, he was going to have to play defense and be accountable.
"They didn't know what to expect of me," Taylor said.
He arrived with that belt buckle that looked like a money clip with hundreds falling out of it. Taylor says his now modest beard was so scraggly that he looked like rapper Rick Ross. A couple of runs in a campus rec center told him he could dunk on anybody. The problem was, those games were unstructured.
Taylor quickly got a dose of Anderson's world which included 6 a.m. workouts and the team's own version of Forty Minutes of Hell. Forty minutes of running before a basketball is bounced in practice.
"As much as you can say the other team is getting tired," Taylor said smiling after Thursday's 102-91 victory over Memphis, "you get tired too."
It's a good kind of tired for the Tigers. The other transfer DeMarre Carroll (from Vanderbilt) leads the team in scoring. Forward Leo Lyons, suspended earlier this season for some outstanding parking tickets, might be the Tigers MVP in the postseason. The Tigers' link with greatness is backup guard Miguel Paul who might not be the third cousin of NBA star Chris Paul. Miguel claims a blood relationship. Chris has never heard of the Missouri guard.
The heart of the team might be Taylor and point guard J.T. Tiller. The best defensive backcourt left in the tournament is instinctive. The play that resulted in Taylor's game-winning shot against Kansas on Feb. 9 was the same one that Tiller was fouled on in the second-round against Marquette. Tiller was injured going to the rack with 5.5 seconds left. Teammate Kim English came off the bench for the two insurance free throws to propel the Tigers into the Elite Eight.
"I never felt so comfortable playing with somebody than I do J.T.," Taylor said. "A lot of times the things we do, we don't even talk."
Taylor even drew from old pickup games with his uncle Gary. The uncle would pick his young nephew to play with a bunch of 30-35 year-olds against the young bucks. Taylor learned how to play the point on a 2-3 zone because that's all the old guys' lungs could bear.
"We'd be on the court for a long time," Taylor said.
He spews out logic like he was 42 instead of 22. This is a man who still stays in touch with the roommate who stiffed him, his ex-fiancé and the Delaware coach who became the reason he transferred to Missouri in 2007.
"He was trying to do what I wasn't ready for," Taylor says of Monte Ross, whose Blue Hens have gone 27-38 without him.
"I don't hold any grudges or anything like that," Taylor added. "As far as my ex-fiancé, she has a boyfriend now. I actually talk to her from time to time and she wishes me good luck. My former roommate, we actually talk now. People make mistakes. Usually mine end up hurting me the most."
The hurt is over for now. If there is no more basketball left for a skinny 6-3 guard from Staten Island, Taylor is serious about this writing thing. He applied his sociology major to both his poetry and songwriting.
"I write about anything," Taylor said. "If [teammate] Justin Safford is going through something, I write about his life as if it were mine. I write about love and heartbreak and ... lust, a little bit."
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