Wednesday, March 4, 2015

A Taylor Johns feature

Missed this Olivia Phelps-written feature from February 19:

“You have more to you,” – was a theme over the summer for the UC Riverside men’s basketball team.

“You have more to you,” coach Dennis Cutts would say.

“No matter how much you think you want to quit, you have more.”

Picked to finish ninth in the Big West Preseason Coaches Poll, Riverside has played its 2015 campaign knowing it has something to prove.

After a 2014 season that saw a 10-21 overall record and a 5-11 mark in league, junior forward Taylor Johns was ready for the next part of a process he began in 2012: to put UC Riverside on the map.

“[Over the summer] we kept running and kept telling ourselves that if we want to be good, we have to give more.  If we want to be good, we can’t stop.  You have to keep going until it’s done,” said Johns.

While it might have been a new concept for some of his teammates, it wasn’t a new idea for the six-foot-seven San Francisco native.

Growing up in a place he describes as “hectic”, Johns explains he’s always been underestimated, even in high school at Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep, and is no stranger to being the underdog.

Originally a football player after his sister signed him up for a youth league at just five or six years old, Johns realized with time that his talents were better suited on the court and with a basketball in his hand.  

“If I was playing the game I loved, it would be football,” he said.

For the remainder.

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