Taylor Pikes is a garbage player.And no, that is not a bad thing. Actually, quite the opposite.

“I like to say that when you’re a garbage player in basketball, it’s a huge compliment,” said women’s basketball Head Coach Doug Bruno of Pikes.

So what does it mean?

“If somebody misses a shot, you get the rebound. You do little things,” Bruno said. “If there’s a loose ball, you go for the loose ball. Your scoring doesn’t come from any specific manner. It’s not ‘Wow she’s a great 3-point shooter; wow she’s a great post-up player; wow she’s a great kid off the bounce.’ And yet she still scores, and it just comes from a variety of different places.”

It is not a lack of talent. Her teammates will tell you she has plenty.

“She comes off the bench, and she’s just exactly the [same as the] starters,” said G Deirdre Naughton. “She could be one of the starters. If ever something happened, she would be right there to kind of pick up where that person left off.”

All of those skills were clearly evident in last Tuesday’s game against Rutgers.

After falling behind 19 in the first half, the Scarlet Knights fought back, pulling themselves within two, 55-53, with only 5:37 remaining on the clock.

Then Pikes went on a sneaky run. She hit a jumper to go up four, then got a steal on Rutgers’ next possession, and assisted on a bucket inside by Keisha Hampton. With 1:17 left, Pikes quietly moved behind the defense and found an open spot under the basket. Hampton fired a pass inside and Pikes easily hit the open lay-up to make it 61-53.

Three straight baskets and Pikes, the team’s sixth man, had a hand in all of them.

“She finds openings,” Bruno said of her play. “The other night, when we were struggling in the second half against Rutgers, she did a great job of just finding and sneaking and slipping into some openings. She found us some buckets that we really, really needed.”

It is a skill that some people simply possess-a knack for anticipating where the ball will go, and where space will open up. And Pikes has it.

“Yeah, it’s natural,” Pikes said of her ability to see the court. “But coming here, Doug has made me understand that I have quick vision. So if I recognize something on the floor, see an opening, see a rebound, I’m going to get it or I’m gonna get to that spot. My eyes work quick for me.”

Pikes began honing that vision at the age of five. She said her brother was a “basketball fiend,” and that he would wake her up at 7 a.m. on the weekends to go shoot hoops on the court next to their house.

That led to a lot of playing time on organized girls teams growing up. But Pikes really flourished when she was forced to come off the bench against the opposite sex.

“I started most of my life,” Pikes said. “But growing up, I always played with boys. I was always on a [girls] basketball team from fifth to eighth grade and all of that, but they weren’t ever good. So I always played with the guys. But with the guys I was always the sixth man. So they just picked me up to have an extra. I think that’s where my vision came from, because they never wanted me to shoot. It was just passing.”

That experience helped get Pikes to DePaul, where she finds herself once again coming off the bench.

But that was not always the case. When the season started, Pikes’ role was undetermined.

She started two of the first three games this year, with Katherine Harry starting the second game. Bruno said he was intending to change the starting five based on game matchups.

But after a few games, Bruno decided to keep Harry in the starting lineup and have Pikes anchor his bench for the more consistency.

“I think the first couple games, we were experimenting to see [what lineup worked best],” Bruno said. “I wasn’t sure if we were gonna go with the big lineup all year, or if we wouldn’t be better off going from game to game.and I just felt we were better off when people start the game, when people come off the bench. She played early in the season better off the bench than she did in the couple games she did start. So it was just, let’s leave it the way it is.”

Pikes is averaging 7.7 points and 6.3 rebounds per game while shooting 56.1 percent from the field in her role as sixth man. She also has 22 steals and 50 assists on the year. Her height (6′ 2″) and quickness also make her versatile.

“I think we’re just really confident we have someone like that,” said senior G Sam Quigley. “She’s a multiple position player so she can come in and play a post position if someone gets in foul trouble, or she can come in and play a guard position if someone’s struggling or anything like that. So it’s good to have a multi-dimensional player.”

Pikes’ attitude also helps keep the team loose, said Bruno. He called it “playing with a happy on.”

“It means you play with energy, you play with liveliness, you play with life,” Bruno said. “And it energizes everybody when you play with happy on, as opposed to playing with a surly disposition.”

Quigley said it is something the team tries to do-and Pikes embodies it, often flashing a big smile while playing.

“Yeah, I think that something we talk about is not getting down on yourself, and not getting [ticked] off if you missed a shot or something like that,” she said. “Taylor’s definitely someone who might miss a shot but she’d be running back down the court like, with this grin on her face.

“It’s like, what are you smiling about?” she added, laughing.

For Pikes, there is plenty to be happy about. She used last year as a “getting-back season” she said, after having knee surgery that kept her out for most of the 2008-09 campaign.

Now, she has a vital role on a 24-3, top-10 team.

“We looked at her as a starter in the coach’s mind’s eye,” Bruno said. “We try to clearly explain to each player what their role is.If something happens to anybody, she’s equal to a starter. So even though she doesn’t start when the game starts, we consider Taylor a starter.”

When Bruno made her move to the bench permanent earlier this season, he made it clear that she would still be an important piece, and a player the team relied on. And she believed him.

“We were in like a team meeting, and he was going over the roles with each player,” Pikes said. “He told me, ‘We’re gonna bring you off the bench. You’re a starter in our mind’s eye.’ And when he said that, I automatically knew I was gonna play a lot. That was just a step up from last year, because last year I really didn’t play that much.

“So coming to be a starter in the mind’s eye and being a sixth man, it’s an honor.”

Just like being called a garbage player.