Mike Taylor Position: Assistant Coach At Rice: ninth season

A former player under head coach Wayne Graham at San Jacinto College, Mike Taylor is in his ninth season as an assistant baseball coach at Rice after being hand-picked by his legendary mentor to join the Owl staff in 2000.

Now in his 17th season of coaching, Taylor works with the Rice hitters. He also tutors the infielders on fielding and executing defensive schemes. Taylor coaches at first base on game day and shares the recruiting coordinator duties with fellow assistant coach David Pierce.

In recruiting, Taylor and Pierce have done an exemplary job of finding the country's top student-athletes. The duo have brought in the top young players from across the country, then coached and developed their talent to reach the next level.

Rice has become a veritable pipeline to the pro ranks with 67 Owls selected in the major league draft in Taylor's eight years on the job. Two Taylor-coached all-America infielders, Joe Savery and Brian Friday, were selected in the top three rounds of the 2007 major league draft. J.P. Padron was the most-recent Owl infielder drafted last season. There is every reason to expect more of the same in the years to come.

Major league teams would certainly give the Taylor/Pierce recruiting duo a high grade, and the University would no doubt do the same, for making sure the Rice student-athletes are students first. In 2008, 13 members of the Owl baseball program were selected to the Conference USA Commissioner's Academic Honor Roll for maintaining a semester grade point average of 3.0 or higher.

On the field Taylor's Owl infielders have emerged as one of the best groups in college baseball. Under his tutelage Rice infielders (1b, 2b, 3b ss & c) had a .980 fielding percentage in 2008. Rice's national championship team of 2003, meanwhile, had an errorless streak of 85.2 innings at one point, which was then followed by another of 73.1 frames without a defensive miscue.

A former standout shortstop for Graham at San Jacinto, Taylor came to Rice in 2001. Previously he spent two seasons as an assistant at Galveston College, helping the Whitecaps to a two-year record of 84-34 and a conference championship in 2000. Galveston finished the season ranked fourth nationally.

Previously, the 40-year-old Houston native spent six seasons as an assistant at Blinn College in Brenham. Those Buccaneer teams won two conference titles and never failed to finish below the top three in the league. Blinn went 259-103 in those six seasons, ranking as high as number-three in the nation in 1993.

After a schoolboy career in which he was named Houston's high school player of the year in 1986, Taylor played on one national championship team under Graham at San Jacinto as a freshman in 1987, and on a national runner-up squad in 1988. Graham has called him "the best shortstop I've ever coached."

From San Jacinto, Taylor started his professional career, playing five seasons in the Toronto Blue Jays organization. He retired in 1992 after his third season with the Knoxville Blue Jays of the Class AA Southern League.

While coaching at Blinn, Taylor completed his undergraduate degree in human performance at Prairie View A&M, earning his B.S. degree in 1997.

Taylor and his wife Amy live in Pearland. The couple have three daughters. Macy Marie (4) was born during the 2003 Houston Regional championship. Madisyn, joined the Taylor starting lineup on Oct. 2, 2005. The newest addition to the family, Molly Kate, was born on Jan. 14, 2009.