I have been around Austin Peay basketball in some capacity for quite some time, for good and less-good. Your mileage might vary compared to mine, but for everyone who cares a fiddler's wit about the program, there's a way to mark time by the superstars.

I was eight or nine when I learned that just down the road from my little rural stretch of pavement, there was a guy called Bubba doing extraordinary things with a basketball. A guy from my school (Michael Head) briefly crossed paths with Bubba as a teammate and the stories that filtered down even to the young kids in this K-12 school from teachers and coaches and staff who had gone to see Mike in Clarksville were the stuff that perks your ears up.

Y'all hear about that Wells guy? Got a chance at the NBA.

We saw him last week. Scored 37 and barely broke a sweat.

They said he had a rod inserted in his leg, but he was jumping 40 inches when I saw him.

I never got to see Bubba in person, but that didn't matter. That guy, from little old Austin Peay, was appearing in Sports Illustrated and being mentioned on the news. To be mentioned on the local late news in the mid-to-late 90s meant you were either royalty or a standout athlete. Bubba was more than an athlete. Bubba was an event.

When Bubba moved on to the NBA, the next crop of stars joined the Govs in Trenton Hassell and Nick Stapleton. Hassell posted one of the better professional careers among Ohio Valley Conference alums anyone has ever seen. Stapleton might have been the best pure scorer this university ever produced. They played together. Together!

Stapleton was faster than anyone possessing a basketball had any right to be. That level of coordination and quickness is against nature. He was so sure of himself, so in possession of his body and skills and coordination, that any miscue seemed more accidental than anything. The mainframe had to have glitched, because Nick Stapleton doesn't mess up.

Hassell was larger than life, predisposed to a future of inconceivable stardom. His talents and skills were such that he could simply do what he wanted. Lock down a guy? Sure. Score? If that was required. Facilitate? If he drove the lane, entire defenses collapsed on him. It all looked so fluid, so natural, because it was. Because he made it that way. Because basketball was so much a part of his life that, legend has it, he would leave practice in the Dunn and show up to play intramurals in the Little Red Barn. That's how hooked on basketball the man was.

Hassell and Stapleton begat the Adrian Henning era and the suffocating defense that led to some of the greatest teams of the Dave Loos era. From Henning, Josh Lewis and the rest of that crew came Drake Reed, Derek Wright, Wes Channels and an era of unprecedented depth that led to more banners. Reed will likely go down as the hardest-to-define star of his and many other eras, an old-school banger who tossed his body into the fray against opponents who might have been larger but couldn't have been tougher. Reed sought out contact, needed it, defined his entire game by toughness and never, ever got punked out by anyone.

As the Reed-Channels era wound down, along came Chris Horton—all arms and legs and leaping ability to start with, as a freshman his offensive game was so raw that it was basically lobs, dunks and putbacks. Over four years, his rim protection never waned, his rebounding prowess never wavered and his offensive game grew exponentially, year over year. By his senior season, he was a monster.

We all remember that magical four-day stretch in March of 2016 when Horton, in his first OVC Tournament appearance, led the eighth-seeded Govs to four wins in four days to claim the most improbable tournament crown in league history. Horton gradually grew into his legend—and then suddenly cemented it over four days at Municipal Auditorium in Nashville.

And just a year after Horton, along came Terry Taylor.

Before he ever stepped foot on campus, he had secured some level of legend: as one of the final signings of the Loos era, Taylor bridged the gap—from Loos' grizzled basketball eye to Matt Figger's new-school approach. He had signed his NLI and then led Bowling Green High School to a Kentucky state title and earned MVP of the state tournament. That's a big deal in any state; it's legacy-defining in Kentucky. Taylor might have tried to beg out of his commitment to Austin Peay between the change in coaches and his new-found status as the darling of Kentucky prep hoops.

He didn't. Not who he is. He believed in what was happening in Clarksville and his place in it.

He came to Clarksville and immediately became one of the best freshman players the program has ever seen. He will forever be the answer to the trivia question, "Who was OVC Freshman of the Year when Ja Morant was a freshman at Murray State?" because, from nearly every metric, Taylor was statistically superior that season. He didn't just improve over every season—he went from good to great to something altogether different than we had ever seen before.

Somewhere along the way, Terry Taylor became the standard. Between his significance as a player, the prowess of the records he will leave Austin Peay with, the caliber of his character and the largesse of his legacy, it will be tough to surpass Taylor's combination of player and person in the annals of Austin Peay basketball.  This isn't to say someone won't, because once upon a time Wells held that standard, and to some he might still be the beacon of Austin Peay men's basketball.

But Taylor has done things no one else has done. He's done things it seems improbable someone else will do. Numbers aren't everything; but to watch Taylor the last four years would be to see greatness personified. We'll see similar again; to see better is almost too much to expect. Because he has proven, time and again, that he is that good.