True greatness in sports is inarguable.
You can debate how great certain players are in any sport, but once you see a truly great player, there’s just no argument. It’s so obvious as to be self-evident.
I’ve been asked many times who the greatest UCF athlete I’ve ever seen at their sport is, and my answer is the same: Jermaine Taylor.
You may not have known a thing about basketball, but if you saw a game Jermaine played in, he was undoubtedly the best player out there every night. His greatness on the floor
was so easy, so effortless, it was easy to take it for granted.
I like to joke that nobody has been dunked on by Jermaine Taylor more than me. I came back to UCF for Jermaine’s senior year in 2008-2009. I had the task of running the in-arena camera under the basket in front of the student section. At least once per game that year, Jermaine got a breakaway dunk toward the Knightmare, and I got the shot of the night, like here against John Calipari’s Memphis Tigers:
Do a YouTube deep dive on Jermaine Taylor and you’ll catch dozens of moments like this, both from his UCF career and his pro career in the NBA and G-League.
But to me, it’s the story behind the dunks that makes JT worthy of having his jersey retired at UCF.
The Resume
Highlights are one thing, but JT has the resume:
- UCF’s all-time leading scorer in Division I with 1,979 points
- UCF’s Division I record for points in a game with 45
- UCF’s single-season points record at any level with 812 in 2008-09
- He owns the two highest totals in UCF D-I history
- UCF’s single-season scoring average record at 26.2 in 2008-09
- He’s the only D-I era player in the top ten and he has the top two single-season averages in the D-I era
- Most field goals in D-I history (3rd regardless of era)
- Second-most three-pointers in UCF history
- Most 20-point games in a season (24 in 31 games)
- Most 20-point games in a career (50 in 122 career games)
- Most 30-point games in a season (10)
- Most 30-point games in a career (14)
- 2009 Conference USA Player of the Year
- Only Mark Jones has won a conference player of the year award as a Knight, in the A-Sun
- AP All-America Honorable Mention in 2009
- Second UCF player to be selected in the NBA Draft
- First UCF player to play in an NBA regular season game
The only guy ahead of JT on UCF’s all-time lists is Bo Clark, and his number is already hanging in the rafters alongside his father and coach, Torchy.
Sadly we don’t have any film of Bo, but we do have video of Jermaine. Unfortunately, it’s quite old and far between, but it’s still spectacular:
Had Instagram, TikTok and even YouTube been then what they are now, JT would have been a viral phenomenon.
But what mattered the most to me was what JT meant off the floor.
The Story
JT is a Central Florida kid. Originally from Tavares, he chose UCF over offers from much higher-profile schools and stayed all four years. Nobody would have blamed him if he did leave UCF, sit out a year, and play at Florida or Alabama. But he didn’t do that.
I didn’t see him his first three years, but when I met him prior to his senior year, I was astonished at how humble he was. He was almost reluctant for the attention he got coming into that year. But as unassuming as he was off the floor, he was anything but that on it.
And in his senior year, he unleashed hell.
26 points per game. 48% shooting. 38% from three-point range. 82% from the line.
When UCF as a team faltered due to multiple injuries to other key players down the stretch, Jermaine did all he could to stem the tide, averaging 35.1 points per game over UCF’s final seven contests.
His best game came in a loss to Rice: 45 points on 14/29 field goals, 5/13 from three-point range, 12/13 at the line, and 26 of UCF’s 30 second-half points.
But the numbers didn’t do him justice. We came to the arena each night wondering what crazy thing he would do, and then he exceeded that.
Yet, despite all he did, UCF did not make the NCAA Tournament.
Some may see that as a scar on his career, but I don’t. I think it is a reminder of how fleeting sports can be. You can be the best out there, even by far, and it still sometimes isn’t enough. But that should not be what your legacy is. Your legacy is what you left out there in the arena. He left everything.
And then he was selected in the second round of the NBA Draft.
Jermaine’s pro career is a case study in exactly how hard it is to be a professional athlete. He played just 65 games in the NBA because he just wanted to play. So he asked to go to the NBA G-League to get on the floor.
He averaged 14 points per game over seven seasons in the G-League, including 24 points per game with the Maine Red Claws in 2012-13. From Texas to Maine to Utah, and in Spain, China, and New Zealand, Jermaine proved what we already knew: He was one of the most explosive human buckets in the sport.
But the dream of dominating in the NBA full-time was not to be.
JT spent a couple of seasons in the Big3 and again proceeded to score buckets upon buckets, this time against a number of NBA veterans.
Still, two devastating knee injuries and fate left him just on the outside of stardom.
Even with all of the talent in the world, sometimes life doesn’t give you the breaks you want. And it hurts. But it’s how you play that hand that makes the difference. In the uber-cutthroat world of professional basketball, just making it as far as he did is a miracle in itself.
Jermaine came back to UCF, worked on his degree while helping the basketball program, and also has worked tirelessly to make things better for kids like him in his native Tavares. You can also catch him at UCF basketball games now, sitting near the bench, rooting his Knights on.
That to me is what the core of a legacy consists of: Do you leave the world better than how you found it?
JT has done that.
He’s already in the UCF Athletics Hall of Fame, but even that prestigious honor doesn’t fully represent how significant of a figure he is in the history of UCF Basketball.
Fate denied him the recognition many of us felt he should have gotten at the pro level. It’s strange how a guy who went toe-to-toe against the game’s legends can almost blend into the background.
But fortunately, we at his alma mater can do something about that. I think we should.
Jermaine Taylor stands at the pinnacle of what it means to be a great UCF Knight. The journey of a student athlete is long, and it is never smooth, even after they’ve finished their career at UCF. But Jermaine was given remarkable gifts — talent, grit, humility, selflessness — and he fought mightily to share those gifts with all of us for the benefit of this university we all love so much.
That’s why we should cement his legacy and raise his number 1 to the rafters at Addition Financial Arena.
