Texas Basketball: 3 best players from Shaka Smart-era so far

3. Isaiah Taylor, Point Guard

The 6-foot-1 and 170 pound Hayward, CA, native point guard and The Village School (TX) product Isaiah Taylor only played one season with Smart as his head coach. Taylor was originally recruited, signed, and developed, early in his college career by Barnes as head coach. Barnes was the Texas head coach for the first two years in Taylor’s college career.

The two-time All-Big 12 honoree and Freshman All-American was very accomplished in his last two years on the Forty Acres, though. He had a stellar junior season, when Smart was in the midst of his inaugural season on campus. Taylor registered a career-best in most per game stats in 2015-16. He averaged 15.0 points per game, 2.8 rebounds, 5.0 assists, and 0.9 steals, while shooting 42.0 percent from the field and 31.1 percent from beyond the arc, as a junior.

Advanced numbers were very friendly to Taylor too during his junior season with the Longhorns. He registered a box plus/minus rating of 7.4, .167 win shares per 40 minutes, 4.3 win shares, 52.5 true shooting percentage, and 21.4 player efficiency rating in the 2015-16 season. Taylor was really a brilliant distributor of the ball too.

He ranks in the top 10 in recorded history for the assist rate statistic (since the early 1990’s) in the Big 12, and he was tops in the conference in 2015-16 in assist rate. He posted a career assist rate of 31.4 percent and 35.3 percent in 2015-16.

Taylor also ranked in the top 10 in the Big 12 in points per game, assists per game, win shares per 40 minutes, and player efficiency rating, during his junior season.