Heading home to Virginia… but not the U of
Former Syracuse Orange men’s basketball forward Justin Taylor announced he will be committing to the James Madison Dukes for the 2024-25 season, becoming the third player from last year’s roster to secure a new destination since entering the transfer portal.
Taylor played 61 games for Syracuse across two seasons and started all of the Orange’s 32 games this past season, which saw him both step up as an undersized forward and struggle to generate enough consistency while on the court. He will look to take advantage of the fresh start with James Madison, the current Sun Belt conference champions who just advanced to the second round of the 2024 NCAA Tournament.
This past season, Taylor averaged 5.0 points, 4.0 rebounds and 1.0 assists in 23.2 minutes per game. He concluded his time with the Orange averaging 4.6 points, 2.9 rebounds and 0.8 assists per game.
home is where the heart is #committed pic.twitter.com/s1AlOTgR5k
— justin taylor (@jctbball12) April 15, 2024
After coming off the bench in 2022-23, Taylor made the jump to full-time starter partly due to an early-season suspension of Benny Williams and the on-going absence of Chance Westry due to injury. Despite his lack of size compared to most forwards, Taylor stepped up enough to play significant minutes in what became a limited rotation Adrian Autry had to work with.
But over the course of this past season, Taylor struggled with inefficiency on offense as he only shot 35% from the field and 30% from three. While he scored 10 points or more in eight of the Orange’s 32 games (including a season-best 15 points versus Cornell) and played the fifth-most minutes per game on last year’s team, Taylor also had 19 games with one made field goal or less.
While he did not release an official public statement, Taylor did drop this interesting story post on Instagram:
Ouch https://t.co/ePbHgJYMZZ pic.twitter.com/1ZnxJt5KJU
— Sam Stavrakos (@Sammystav4) April 15, 2024
Outside of Taylor, former Syracuse players Peter Carey and Benny Williams also found new destinations with Siena and Central Florida shortly after entering the transfer portal, respectively. Maliq Brown and Quadir Copeland are the other remaining two Syracuse players from last year’s team currently in the portal. Brown is scheduled to visit Duke this week.
We wish all the best to Taylor and hope the Charlottesville native can continue his development with JMU.