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Basketball has been good to Tayler Bennett.
It not only allowed her to study architecture and interior design, but also has taken her to Norway and Malta. Bennett began her collegiate career at Rice, playing three seasons for the Owls before transferring to Academy of Art University for her final season. Last season, she played for Caffe Moak Luxol in Malta, averaging 17.8 points, 9.6 rebounds, 4.3 assists and 2.8 steals per game.
While she’s looking for a new team, she found time to talk about the differences between Division I and Division II basketball, cooking at home and following your dreams. Some highlights from our conversation include:
On her father being her assistant coach in high school:
He was very good at finding the balance. When I stepped on the court, he put his basketball hat on, and when we step off the court, he gets to put his dad hat back on. So whatever he said to me on the court, I knew it was from coming from my coach. If I had questions about it afterwards, we could just talk about it. Or a play or practice or anything that came to mind. There was never any type of, “Oh, my gosh, he’s being so hard on me today. Why is my dad doing that?” No, we we definitely knew how to keep things separate when it comes to basketball and him being my actual dad.
On what’s better for player development, being on the bench at a Division I school or a starter at a Division II school:
You’re going to learn a lot more about basketball, in terms of basketball IQ, out of DI school. Even if you’re on the bench, you’re going to observe, observe and absorb a lot from your teammates or coaches because you’re at that DI level. All of these people surrounding you are there for a reason, including you, because what you did in high school, it got you to a DI school. I didn’t play a lot like you said, but my talent and work ethic still got me there, so I’m still grateful to be able to be surrounded by the teammates that I had and to absorb all the knowledge that my coaches had to instill in me. Mindset, hard work, work ethic-wise… I feel like I absorbed a lot from everybody that was around me, so if I was giving advice to somebody who’s trying to choose between starting at DII and not playing at D1, I would still say, like, go to DI because there is that chance that you can still play. If you have that drive and you have that work ethic and you put in all the work there, there will be times where you will get in the game.
A special thank you to Samuel A. Diomande of Dreamer Sports Agency for arranging the interview.
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