Sydney ‘swish’ Taylor lived up to her nickname on Wednesday.
The Massachusetts women’s basketball team was decked out in pink for its Play4Kay game and went out with a bang by defeating VCU 66-57 in its final home game of the 2021-2022 season. The win secures UMass (22-6, 10-4 Atlantic 10) the No. 3 seed in the A-10 conference tournament.
Taylor led all scorers with 23 points on 7-for-16 shooting, and accumulated one rebound, one assist, one block and one steal. She played all 40 minutes of the game.
Taylor started off her high-scoring night in typical fashion — with a 3-pointer. Coming off Angelique Ngalakulondi’s screen, Taylor escaped her defender and rattled home the trifecta on a timely pass from Ber’Nyah Mayo. This triple capped off a 7-0 UMass run right from the tip-off.
“Taylor was terrific on both sides of the ball,” Verdi said. “Obviously offensively, 23 points, but defensively, what she did was outstanding. Robinson is one of the best players in the league as we know, but I thought [Taylor] did a great job on her.”
Taylor’s offensive outburst was important, but it was her stifling defensive effort that made the biggest impact. She was assigned the difficult job of containing Rams guard Taya Robinson, a dynamic player who provides her team with efficient scoring night in and night out.
“She’s definitely a tough person to play against,” Taylor said. “I know she scored like 18 on me last game in one half so I had to focus and lock in on her on defense and just try and get as many stops as I can. We knew a lot of their plays, we knew what [Robinson] was going to do when the help side defender could come and help so I think that was key in stopping her today.”
With the win, UMass swept the season series versus VCU 2-0, nearly a year after the Rams were able to bounce it out of the A-10 conference championship game. When the two teams faced off in January earlier in the season, Taylor came in with a similar vendetta to what she flashed on Wednesday, as she dropped a season-high 32 points en route to a 72-60 victory. In that game, she nailed the dagger 3-pointer to prevent VCU’s late comeback attempt.
“[VCU] beat us in the [championship game], so it’s kinda like a chip on my shoulder,” Taylor said. “I definitely want to take it to them every time we play them.”
After getting blocked on both of her first two jump shot attempts in the third quarter, Taylor finished the final two minutes with a hot hand. She began the series of fortunate events by making a well-timed cut to the basket after her defender left the back door unlocked and finished off an easy layup on a great find from Ngalakulondi. Taylor then earned two trips to the charity stripe after knuckling down, driving hard to the hoop and absorbing contact at the rim. She went a perfect 4-for-4 from the line, then finished off the ensemble with a buzzer beater 3-pointer with a hand in her face. Taylor’s multidimensional play was in full force, and the terrific sequence from No. 1 got the Mullins Center roaring.
“I think it says that she should be an All-Conference player,” Verdi said. “She wasn’t picked [the] last couple years. I think people wanted to see that type of consistency from her. We all know when she’s consistent she’s really good. She can score at all three levels. We’re pretty good when she can do that for us.”
Michael Araujo can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @araujo_michael_.
