Dave Jones at PennLive:
You never know quite when “the light will come on for certain players. Or if it will at all. But when it does, the result can give light for an entire team.
That’s what happened for Brandon Taylor and the Penn State basketball squad this year. The senior power forward turned from a one-dimensional pop-4 corner 3-point specialist – the sort of guy everyone kind of gets tired of in pick-up ball because he has a big body but never mixes it up inside – to a versatile, driven all-around force.
That the Nittany Lions enter the Big Ten tournament with a 7-11 league record, their best in the 5-year regime of Patrick Chambers, is largely a credit to Taylor. He has made this happen with a limited roster more than anyone else. And in a transition year in which 4 or 5 Big Ten wins would have been more expected, it was a very welcome development for the coach:
“It’s funny, I just had him in here,” said Chambers from his office in State College this morning. “We went over his goals from the beginning of the year.”Chambers listed them:
- Nutrition, eat right, shape your body.
- Work on your ball-handling and post moves, in the paint, different shots.
- Continue to hone your strength – 3-point shooting.
Taylor did all of those things and more.
More at the source: “Light came on” for Brandon Taylor and it lit the way for Penn State basketball | PennLive.com