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Las Vegas
Three months later, Brandon Taylor and Nick Emery nearly converged in Las Vegas. Emery and the BYU Cougars headed home early from the West Coast Conference basketball tournament, just before Taylor and the Utah Utes arrived to prepare for Thursday's quarterfinal game in the Pac-12 event.
They're forever linked, like it or not. Unlike the faceless Memphis football players in the Miami Beach Brawl, Taylor will be framed in the image of Emery's punch in last December's BYU-Utah game. That incident lives on, far beyond Utah.
A major story in this week's Sports Illustrated about the human psychology and physiology of punching details BYU's recent history with defensive back Kai Nacua in Miami and Emery at the Huntsman Center. They're chronicled among other notorious events in sports — notably Kermit Washington's punch of Rudy Tomjanovich in an NBA game of almost 40 years ago.
And you thought Emery's punch might have a shelf life?
Fairly or unfairly, indefinitely and inescapably, that moment will dog him. As Emery pursues BYU's all-time scoring record, it will always be a footnote or even the framework of his career arc.
Taylor has been involved in so many defining moments — good and bad — in Utah's Pac-12 schedule that the BYU game barely fits into the story of his season. The senior guard, named the Pac-12's basketball scholar-athlete of the year, has gone through his own dark times. As the Utes move into the conference tournament and beyond, he may be the most compelling figure on a team that features All-America center Jakob Poeltl.
The snapshot of Taylor's season came last Saturday on Senior Night, as the Utes struggled for the first 32 minutes against Colorado, falling behind by 14 points. And then during Utah's 19-0 run, Taylor produced five free throws, three rebounds, three assists and two steals. He later made two more critical foul shots — concluding a regular season that was repeatedly framed by Taylor's being fouled, or fouling.
He missed two free throws in an overtime loss at Stanford, with a chance to win the game in regulation. His foul enabled Oregon State to steal a victory in early February. The Utes lost again at Oregon three days later, but they're 7-0 since then.
"I was at the bottom of the bottom … I was down and out; it didn't make any sense," Taylor said last week. "It was a matter of my outlasting those tough times."
That's exactly what happened against Colorado, after some other unwelcome challenges. There's much more to come in Utah's season, and you know Taylor will be in the middle of it all. He's pivotal in the program's revival, as a spring signee who once wondered if he would play college basketball. Taylor has thrived in Utah as a multidimensional person, as his Pac-12 award illustrated. Sports Illustrated marveled about how he resisted human tendencies by not fighting back against Emery, whose portrayal (and BYU's) is unfavorable, in contrast.
Taylor said an interesting thing, how he and fellow senior Jordan Loveridge turned around their own seasons when they realized they needed to play with more "personality" and "swagger."
That's Emery's game, but he'll never be allowed to do it. That's part of his punishment, which is fair. He can't be the emotion-driven player he was at Lone Peak High School.
His reined-in approach is working. He made the WCC all-tournament team by scoring 42 points in two games, including 27 against Gonzaga in the semifinals. If BYU lasts long enough in the NIT, Emery may challenge Danny Ainge's freshman scoring record. In 2019, he'll be chasing Tyler Haws' career mark.
In or out of basketball, Brandon Taylor will have moved on to bigger pursuits in life by then, after having made a lasting impression on Utah's campus. The same will be said of Nick Emery, for different reasons.
Twitter: @tribkurt