Basketball: Ex-UVic bench boss entering B.C. sports shrine

Former Victoria coach Gary Taylor, who's due to be inducted into the Basketball BC Hall of Fame, is the answer to a great trivia question.

Name a coach who was succeeded immediately by Ken Shields and Don Horwood -- two of the best ever in Canadian university hoops -- at two different schools.

Taylor was replaced by a young Horwood at Oak Bay High School in Victoria in 1971, when Taylor took over the Vikes program. Five seasons later, Taylor was replaced at UVic by Shields, who as you know, built a program that won a record seven straight national championships.

Mark Wacyk posted an interview with Don Horwood last summer for cishoops.ca, where he related how, at 22, he became Taylor's successor at Oak Bay: "The program was a powerhouse and I later found out that no one else had even applied given the pressure and profile of the job."

It sounds like Gary Taylor was one hell of a coach, so accolades are due to him to and Victoria's hoops community.
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