He holds the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) record for most points in a single game after scoring 138 in 2012.

His aunt, Pixar film producer Darla K. Anderson, often paid for him to attend basketball camps at upper-tier colleges like Duke and Stanford, where he faced tough competition.

[1][4] In his senior year in 2008–09, he averaged 20.4 points and 4.7 assists per game and shot 42.3 percent on three-point field goals.

[3][4][7] Unable to secure a Division I athletic scholarship, he attended Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania as a postgraduate after graduating from high school.

[4][8][9] Mercersburg, a boarding school that offered college-level courses, played in a league that produced Division I players.

[8] Taylor was averaging around 14 points and seven assists in nine games at Mercersburg before tearing the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and lateral meniscus in his left knee in January 2010.

The school employed a unique offensive style—known as the Grinnell System—that relied on shooting as many three-pointers as possible; Taylor thought it fit his playing style.

[4] Grinnell had led all levels of NCAA in scoring for 17 of the past 19 seasons, and their 126.2 points per game in 2003–04 ranked second in history.

[13] He reached 91 points on a 25-footer from the left wing with 11:14 remaining, breaking the Division III record set by Grinnell teammate Griffin Lentsch in the previous season.

With 4:42 left in the game, he hit a three-pointer to pass the NCAA record of 113 set by Bevo Francis of Division II Rio Grande College in 1954.

[13][17] Taylor was the third player to score one hundred or more points in an NCAA game, joining Francis and Frank Selvy.

[26] National Basketball Association (NBA) players, including Bryant and LeBron James, expressed amazement at Taylor's 138 points.

[29] He talked to ESPN,[30] and appeared as a guest the following day on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!.

[30] In his following game against William Penn, ESPN and The Boston Globe were among at least five different media outlets covering Taylor's follow-up performance.

[32][33] Taylor's 2012–13 season ended prematurely on January 9, 2013 when he broke the radius of his shooting arm during a 119–117 win over rival Cornell.

In July 2015, he was one of 60 players accepted to participate in the agency's two-day showcase in Las Vegas that was attended by international scouts, mostly from European leagues.