Once Justin Taylor decided to transfer from Syracuse, the next stop seemed logical for the former basketball standout from STAB who also attended The Covenant School as an elementary student in his hometown of Charlottesville.
That Division I school was JMU, about one hour from where he grew up.
“JMU was the first one to reach out to me,” said Taylor, after the Dukes two-point loss at home on Jan. 7 to Marshall. “I kind of felt like it was home. My mom went here.”
“Some other schools reached out to me, but I fell in love with JMU,” added Taylor, who played three years at STAB before winding up at the IMG Academy in Florida. “I had a lot of history here.”
He spent a lot of time on campus as a boy.
“Not as many basketball games, but definitely football games,” he said. “My mom would have homecoming and see old friends. I knew some kids who came here and played basketball.”
His mother, then known as Kerri Borchardt, was a standout at Albemarle High and was a freshman for the Dukes in 1982-1983.
After finishing up at IMG, Taylor showed interest in Indiana, North Carolina and Florida, among others.
His mother, with background as a lawyer, did an interview with a website that covers IU while her son was trying to pick a school.
“Yeah, I played at JMU (James Madison University). And my dad played at Duke. And my daughter played at William & Mary. So, it’s been a family ordeal,” she told Alex Bozich of insidethehall.com in 2021.
Some of Taylor’s teammates at IMG included Quadir Copeland, who is now at North Carolina State after playing at Syracuse and McNeese; Alex Karaban, who is at UConn; and AJ Storr, who plays for Ole Miss.
Taylor also played lacrosse in high school.
Taylor, whose father is from Schuyler in Nelson County, played two seasons in upstate New York for Syracuse. He played and started all 32 games for the Orange as a sophomore and averaged 5.0 points per contest.
As a freshman, he had a career-high 25 points against Bryant, but averaged just 4.2 points per contest for coach Jim Boeheim.
Last season, as a junior for the Dukes – who won the regular-season title in the Sun Belt – he played in 27 games, with five starts.
Taylor came off the bench in 11 of the first 16 games this season. But he dislocated a finger on his left hand in practice on Jan. 6 and missed the home game the following day against Marshall, as he didn’t suit up.
“It is alright. It is a tiny fracture. I should not need surgery. Hopefully I will be able to wrap it up and see how it feels and go from there,” he said.
“Obviously, that is one you want to win, especially at home. You learn from it. Obviously, it stings right now,” Taylor said after the Dukes fell behind 12-2 to Marshall.
“The lesson is you can’t dig yourself that big of a hole,” JMU coach Preston Spradlin told reporters.
What are Taylor’s plans after college?
“I have thought about it. I don’t think I want to play after this but I could see myself getting back into coaching (like skills work) or an agent. I want to be around sports. I want to help the next generation,” said Taylor, a sports and recreation management major.
Taylor is roommates this year with former JMU player Matt Hain, a native of Australia who played in just four games for the Dukes last season after transferring from Morehead State. The 6-foot-7 player is now a reserve at nearby Division III Bridgewater.
JMU women’s hoops history
Through the end of the 2024-2025 season, the JMU women were fourth all-time in wins by programs that are now Division I.
The list: Tennessee (1495), UConn (1341), Stanford (1256) and JMU (1255).
Former coach Shelia Moorman, who recently turned 80, won more than 300 games from 1982-1997 at JMU. She was the coach when Taylor’s mother was a freshman for the Dukes. Moorman went into the JMU Hall of Fame in 2001.