There aren’t many constants in college basketball these days, but there’s been one in College Station the last four years.

He goes by IV.

“IV has broken nearly every record that has to do with scoring, including being the leading scorer in school history and SEC tournament history,” No. 4 Texas A&M coach Buzz Williams said of his leading scorer, Wade Taylor IV, on Friday afternoon.

It’s been a busy March for IV. He replaced Bernard King and became the program’s all-time leading scorer in the Aggies’ regular-season finale. In Texas A&M’s SEC tournament opener, Taylor became the program’s first player to score 2,000 points and passed Tennessee’s Allan Houston for the conference-tournament scoring record with a 29-point performance in a double-overtime loss to Texas.

With two significant records to his name, Taylor kept his college career going with a 16-point showing in Thursday’s 80-71 win over Yale. He buried a deep, pull-up 3 off the dribble in the final seconds of the first half that gave the Aggies an 11-point lead at halftime. Whenever it looked like the Bulldogs were building momentum in the second half, Taylor had a way of beating his man off the dribble and getting to the basket for a layup.

No. 5 Michigan’s two seven-footers – Vlad Goldin and Danny Wolf – stand between Taylor’s Aggies and his first trip to the Sweet 16. That’s enough to motivate the 6-foot, 180-pound guard from Dallas.

“These guys I’m sitting with up here, we’ve been through a lot. The team that’s established right now, the coaching staff, we haven’t had any changes. The coaches have been the same. We have a lot of the same players,” Taylor said Friday while sitting next to Andersson Garcia and Manny Obaseki, two other members of the Aggies’ eight-man senior class.

“We’ve been through a lot, the ups, the downs, the good, the bad, the ugly. We’ve heard it all. We’ve been underdogs. (We’ve been) supposedly pretty good. We’re just trying to continue to be the best we can be.”

That continuous core has been through its fair share of March Madness. The Aggies advanced to the National Invitational Tournament’s championship game in his freshman season. Taylor led the Aggies back to the NCAA Tournament as a sophomore, but the trip ended with a first-round loss to Penn State. Taylor’s junior year featured a win over Nebraska in the first round.

“This is the first time in 15 years that Texas A&M has won back-to-back games in the NCAA tournament. It’s only the second time in 113 years that Texas A&M has played in at least three consecutive NCAA tournaments,” Williams said.

“IV is a part of a lot of the records. But I think the duration of his time and the depth of the relationship with his teammates, with his staff … I think in IV’s tenure here, we’ve had one staff change. … I think the continuity of the staff and the team, with IV being at the beginning of that … I think it’s a rarity.”

A 25-point, five-assist performance from Taylor in the second round was enough to give No. 1 Houston all it could handle last year, but the Cougars escaped in overtime.

“We was in the position last year. I mean, if it’s not talked about, it’s crossed our minds. I feel like tomorrow is a different opponent, different game, playing for different things now,” Taylor said.

“But I think a win tomorrow would help a lot of us.”

It would also extend a rare college basketball career at least another few days. Regardless of how Saturday’s game goes, Taylor’s impact on Texas A&M is solidified. The program retired his number – No. 4, what else – after he scored 16 points in a win over No. 1 Auburn in his final game at Reed Arena. The only other men’s basketball jersey in the rafters belongs to another IV. Acie Law IV led the Aggies to one of their six Sweet 16 appearances in 2007. Saturday is another IV’s chance to make it seven.

“I’m thankful to be a part of this team,” Taylor said. “We have some special things that I still feel like we have to accomplish, things to do.”