Early in the first half against Kent State last Friday, Doug Taylor made his presence known to everyone at the M.A.C. Center. The only problem was, at that particular moment, Taylor didn't do anything.
Instead, it was a culmination of each prior possession.
Golden Flashes center Adonis De La Rosa and Taylor had been having a game within the game of sorts, each giving an extra push, hand check or glare to the other as each possession ended.
Then after a timeout, Taylor walked back to the bench with De La Rosa right behind. Taylor stopped, then De La Rosa bumped into Taylor — and threw himself on the floor in an attempt to get a foul call. But De La Rosa was called for the technical foul instead.
“That’s Doug at his best," coach Saul Phillips said of Taylor's edginess. "Some guys function better like that, some guys function worse like that. He functions best like that.”
That's the role that Taylor has carved out for himself on the Bobcats, a defensive force in the paint and an energy player at both ends of the floor. It won't show up on the stat sheet, but Taylor has had a bigger impact on games than might be imagined.
He's not one to light it up on the offensive side, which is sometimes tough to quantify.
And recently, his production has become consistent. There's also an edge to his game that is coming out more than ever before.
After Ohio's ugly 75-50 loss to Central Michigan on Jan. 2, Taylor sat down and watched film. What he saw embarrassed him.
“It was like a wake-up call for real," Taylor said. "I felt like I wasn’t bringing enough to the table. I felt like I was selling my guys short. I’m the energy guy, and I felt like we came out lazy and lackadaisical. That’s my fault.”
Just four days later, he registered six rebounds and six blocks — some which made the crowd stand in approval — in a win over Northern Illinois.
"He’s been really locked in for about three or four games," Phillips said. "He’s a proud kid, too, he doesn’t like losing so the last couple haven’t sat real well with him. What are you gonna do?”
Now, the key for Taylor is to continue that production on the defensive end for more than just a game, or a half.
With Ohio in a scoring slump of its own, the defensive end of the floor has become more important for Taylor and the Bobcats. The defense needs to pick the offense up while the offensive end struggles. And that includes Taylor.
“You look at places where we can still get things from, that’s one of them," Phillips said. "He has potential to do more than he’s doing offensively, we have potential to, as a team, find him as a cutter. Put him in spots off of drives where he can catch and dunk.”
Whether or not the offensive end comes in the next few games, or if even this season, Taylor's impact on the defensive side of things hasn't gone unnoticed, by Phillips in particular.
It might just show up in box score as a block or a rebound, but with Taylor, it's becoming more emphatic. He's been able to block shots and control the paint over the last few games with ease, something that has the 6-foot-9 forward walking with a different edge than he had just a few weeks ago.
“Swatting somebody’s shot is like ... it’s like an extra confidence boost, it’s like an energy boost for the guys," Taylor said grinning ear to ear. "It wakes everybody up. Defensively, I feel like I should have a huge impact on games, every game.”
