Northwestern University Athletics
Time is Right for Taphorn to Shine
12/17/2014 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
By Skip Myslenski
NUsports.com Special Contributor
Last Sunday evening, after dropping 16 on Mississippi Valley State in just 13 minutes, `Cat forward Nathan Taphorn iterated one of his coach's favorite mantras. Get out of yourself and just play. That is what Chris Collins regularly preaches.
"He tells all of us that," Taphorn will expound late Tuesday morning. "I think that sometimes in games you worry too much about yourself. He preaches that to us all the time. During the game you might worry about, `Am I going to make this shot?' or `Am I going to get in?' or `Am I going to get time?' When he talks about it, he means just throw yourself into the game, just play as a team, play with the team, and don't worry about your shot, don't worry about playing time, don't worry about anything else. Just play."
Is that another way of saying, "Don't think too much"?
"I think so," says Taphorn. "Thinking too much can cause a lot of mistakes. So, yeah."
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Chris Collins is asked about his mantra. "This means a lot to all these guys," he says. "They all want to do well. And you have a tendency, when you get into a game, to get inside yourself about you doing well. `I have to make a shot.' Or, `I can't turn it over.' When you're in yourself, you get real quiet, and to me you become slower. You almost become paralyzed because you're thinking about what you're telling yourself in your head.
"So the goal for our guys, when we come into games, is to get outside thinking of your own performance, and think about what we need to do. How we're playing defense. How we're executing. I think for Tap especially it's a big thing because he really wants to help and he knows he can and he's trying to establish himself. But he has a tendency then to get out there and kind of play stiff."
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Nathan Taphorn, as a senior at Pekin High School, never played stiff, and he finished that season shooting 48 percent from the field and 41 percent from beyond the arc and 85 percent from the free throw line. But last winter, as a `Cat freshman, he was thinking too much. "I was," he recalls, "too worried about, `Hey, am I going to play?' `Hey, I've been known as a shooter. Am I going to make shots?' I need to just keep playing."
He also did too much thinking earlier this year when the start of his sophomore season was delayed as he recovered from a concussion he suffered in an early-November practice. "I was out for a week or two, didn't play, didn't practice, and something threw me off," he explains. "After that, I thought too much about what I was going to do when I came back instead of just going out and doing what I do and not thinking about it."
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Chris Collins chuckles when asked if his mantra is another way of saying, "Don't think too much."
"That's probably the simple way of saying it," he then says. "Just go out there and play instinctively, (do) all the things we practice, all the things we drill. You're going to make mistakes. There is no perfect game in basketball. LeBron James. Michael Jordan. No one's ever played a perfect game. You're going to miss an assignment. You're going to miss a shot. You're going to turn the ball over. The guys who play well are the guys who play through those things and play off their instincts and don't let one bad thing equate to 10 more."
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Nathan Taphorn, his mind cluttered when he returned from his concussion, shot three-of-12 overall (25 percent) and two-of-nine from beyond the arc (22.2) in this season's first three weeks. But 11 days ago, at Butler, he dropped all three of his attempts (one of them a three) and then, despite early foul trouble, he exploded against the Delta Devils, ending that game seven-of-11 overall and two-of-four on his threes. "I feel pretty confident about it," he now says of his shot. "Worrying about it is that last thing you need to do. Just shoot it. I mean, I've been doing it forever. It's muscle memory. Shooting the ball just comes to me."
"I think these last two games have been big for him," Chris Collins will soon avow. "They've probably been the best two-games-in-a-row he's had. He gave us really good minutes against Butler and then to come back and play the way he did-- if not for foul trouble, it might have been a 20-plus point night for him.
"For a team that at times can struggle to score, he's got the talent to put the ball in the basket. So when he's out there, it gives us another option to score."
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Tre Demps, with JerShon Cobb shut down with injuries, is now in the `Cats starting lineup. That strips them of their best scoring option off the bench, and that is why Nathan Taphorn's recent emergence is notable as they prepare for their Wednesday meeting with Central Michigan and the Big Ten schedule just ahead. Johnnie Vassar can score some with his speed, and Gavin Skelly can do that with his hustle, and Scottie Lindsey can do that with his overall game.
But each of them is a true freshman and about to enter the grinder that is conference play for the first time. Taphorn, in stark contrast, not only did that last winter. He also responded to that experience, hitting the weight room and upping his caloric intake to 6,500 a day and adding 20 pounds of muscle that he lacked while playing as a 195-pound freshman. "That," he will say of his new body, "changed me a lot just confidence wise.
"The Big Ten's probably the strongest conference in the country. There's a lot of big guys, pretty strong, and being in there as a freshman you get pushed around pretty easily. When I was in the weight room thinking of all those times I got shoved while trying to get a rebound, while getting stripped, stuff like that, that motivated me to get bigger. It was fun in the process and seeing myself now on tape, it's pretty relieving. Now I just want to get better."
That is one reason he may now be the most important member of the `Cats bench brigade and the other, of course, is his pure shooting ability. "When I come into the game, I have a mindset now that I'm just going to play and do everything I can," he will say, reflecting his new, uncluttered brainpan. "When I shoot a shot, I know it's going to go in, or I know there's a high probability that it's going to go in because I've practiced it, done it in practice."
"I think so. Just because he's got the talent to give us offense," Collins will finally say when asked if Taphorn is indeed more important now with Demps in the starting lineup. "He's athletic. He's a good player. When you take a guy like JerShon out, other guys have to step up.
"He's a main candidate to elevate his game, and I think he's done that in the last two."
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