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Terps player has work ethic better than some pros

Taylor Mikesell makes at least 500, sometimes 1000 baskets a day

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — This story is for you overachievers out there, and those who aspire to be.

A  freshman player on Maryland's hoops team has a work ethic that is unparalleled. 

Taylor Mikesell's first basket of the morning comes at 7:12am at Xfinity Center on the University of Maryland campus.

She plans on making at least 999 more... make, not attempt.

The college freshman's regular routine is to make 500 baskets on game day... one thousand when they don't have a game. 

She's been doing it since she was a freshman in high school. 

"So I feel like if I put in everything I can into it and if this doesn't work out then I put everything I had into it," says the freshman guard. "Can't be sad or mad about that." 

7:42am and the 19 year old is halfway there... muscle memory taking over. 

"I feel like it's the same shot," says Mikesell. "Every single time it's not going to change. I feel like if I make it a thousand times like this it's gonna go in that much more."

The Terps guard was the Big Ten Conference's Player of the Week for the week of January 14.

While shooting she listed Trae Young, LeBron James, and Steph Curry as hoops heroes.

To put Taylor's practice routine into perspective know this:

When I reached out to the Washington Wizards about how many baskets their players try to make in practice I was told "200-300."

Research shows Steph Curry makes about 500 a day in the off-season, 200-350 during; During his playing days, Kobe Bryant made 700-1000 a day.

And for high schoolers, the number is anywhere between three-to-five hundred a day.

Taylor's coach says she's never seen anything like it in her career. 

"I have not," says Brenda Frese.

Frese has been a head coach for almost 20 years, and an assistant many years before that.

For her to say she's never seen anything like it means something.

"She's special," says Frese. "And I say you know I've been really fortunate to coach the best of the best. You know the names and numbers that are up in our rafters here and nobody has matched the work ethic or the daily routine that Taylor has." 

She reached a thousand made shots around 8:20 am and we thought the interview was over. But Taylor set us straight. 

"Right now I'm at a thousand shots," says Mikesell. "But I need to make a hundred fifty free throws and then I'm done."

Taylor takes her last shot at 8:32 am. 1150 shots in one hour and twenty minutes.

She knows if she's in the gym, "something good's going to happen."

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