College Basketball

How do you follow a 109-point outburst? Probably not like this

Updated Mar. 5, 2020 1:21 a.m. ET

foxsports

Hopefully by now you are aware that Grinnell College guard Jack Taylor is the product of a system oriented around setting individual scoring records -- and that he's not a 5-foot-10, 165-pound Wilt Chamberlain.

Knowing that provides a useful context for what happened this week, when Taylor scored 109 points in one game, and three points the next.

Wednesday against Wartburgh, Taylor went 0 for 5 from the floor and 3 for 6 at the free-throw line in 23 minutes of an 88-79 win. Three days earlier, he had scored 109 points in a 173-123 win over Crossroads College, going 35 for 70 from the field, 24 for 48 from the 3-point line and 15 for 17 at the foul line, all in 29 minutes.

So what was the difference? This biggest one is that Wartburg, like Grinnell, is an NCAA Division III school, while Crossroads College belongs to the Northern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (NIAC) and the Association of Christian College Athletics (ACCA). Crossroads has already played nine games this year, and it has lost all nine, mostly by blowout.

So against a team you know you're going to beat, you give it to Taylor every time and see whether he can get his name in the papers (he can). And the next time out, when it's a game that might take some real effort to win, you play it straight.