Matthew Creger/The Diamondback

Hudson Taylor remembers countless occasions awaiting a chance to audition for a spot in Generics, the university’s all-male a cappella group.

Taylor has always been interested in showing off his singing ability. But each time he went in for a tryout, he left before his turn came, realizing another extracurricular activity would be too time-consuming.

For a typical college student, effective time management can be important. For Taylor, it’s imperative. The fifth-year senior, who has volunteered in political elections, campaigned for gay rights and even crafted his own major, is involved in a slightly more intensive activity throughout the year.

He happens to be, by nearly every statistical measure, the best wrestler in the history of the Terrapin wrestling program. And March 18 in Omaha, Neb., Taylor will attempt to win the Terps’ first wrestling national title in 41 years.

“I kinda had to step back from all of the different activities and focus on my wrestling this season,” Taylor said. “I am not a religious man, but I do believe that my name will live on after I die. I like the fact that if I come back to Maryland in 20 years, I will be able to look up on the wall in the wrestling room and still see my picture and my name hanging there.”

A two-time All-American and the No. 3 wrestler in his 197-pound weight class, Taylor has the most career wins, most career pins and most pins in a season in program history. He’s drawn an abnormal amount of recent media attention for a college wrestler, most of which details his diverse off-the-mat interests and quirky personality.

That innate desire to try new things has helped transform Taylor from a party-first freshman into an enigma, hard to pin down in both life and wrestling.

While Under Armour is the default apparel for Terrapin athletes, Taylor prefers ripped jeans, a flannel shirt and a pair of Chuck Taylors. His fiancee, Lia Mandaglio, said Taylor often takes an ardent interest in her outfits and accessories. She also said if he had the money, he would wear anything from “a burlap sack to a fabulous Gucci suit.”

Mandaglio said Taylor has swapped shirts with complete strangers on the street simply because he wanted to try out something new. Taylor chose to travel to Kenya, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the summer after graduating high school. There, Taylor encountered a man wearing shoes made out of tires, and they immediately swapped footwear. He still has the shoes in his closet.

Not even his wrestling teammates can figure him out. Alex Krom remembers arriving on the campus as a freshman and being introduced to a teammate wearing Ugg boots and oversized, 1970s-style eyeglasses. Krom wondered what he had gotten himself into.

Coach Kerry McCoy, who took over for former coach Pat Santoro in 2008, said despite an almost two-year relationship with his star, there are still things Taylor does in practice that baffle him.

Wednesday, in between sparring sessions with McCoy, Taylor began talking to himself about techniques and strategies, which threw his coach for a loop.

“He is really out there,” McCoy said of Taylor. “The thing about him is, he does whatever he thinks is the right thing to do, and he doesn’t care what other people think of it. We can have disagreements on wrestling technique, and no matter what I say, it won’t matter. He will just do his own thing.”

But Taylor wasn’t always so mature. Taylor remembers skipping class during most of his first semester of freshman year and “enjoying college too much.” Teammate and then-roommate Steve Bell said Taylor probably didn’t have a clean pair of clothes in his entire room and must have lost his room keys “like 400 times.”

As he headed home for winter break that year, Taylor had a 1.8 GPA and wasn’t sure he wanted to go back to school. But once he did, he credited his blossoming relationship with Mandaglio for much of the turnaround. Taylor said Mandaglio, a law student at George Washington University, was incredibly organized and detailed. Her work ethic helped him realize he needed to change his lifestyle.

“He was a mess. He was used to a rigid lifestyle at prep school where everything was scheduled for him and people told him when he needed to get things done,” Mandaglio said of Taylor, whose high school friends at Blair Academy in New Jersey identified him by his free-spirited attitude. “He had never used an agenda book — he couldn’t keep track of anything. I just helped him realize it was all a lot easier than he thought.”

With that, his wrestling results also improved. He finished third at 197 pounds in the National Championships two years ago and repeated that result last year. He’s 38-2 with 24 pins this season.

He admitted he’s more focused on finishing his career on a high note than other interests, but that hasn’t stopped him from showing his outward personality.

It’s not out of the ordinary for Taylor to get sidetracked on a night out with Mandaglio in Washington. He has actually stopped on the side of the street to sit and share stories with a homeless man. McCoy said he’s never heard Taylor say a bad word about anybody, even in a playful manner among teammates.

“I just like to strike up conversations with people and learn as much as I possibly can,” Taylor said. “I view each day as a chance to do something and learn something, and I hate wasting days. I am always trying to expand my horizons and my knowledge. It’s just a personality thing.”

That attitude allows Taylor to avoid being consumed by his quest for a national title. He and McCoy agree that even if he doesn’t win — he narrowly lost to Iowa State’s Jake Varner, the No. 1 wrestler at 197 pounds, in the National Duals in January — Taylor has already cemented his wide-ranging legacy.

When the NCAA Tournament is over, Taylor has no desire to relax in his final two months of college.

Instead, he plans to take up rock climbing and earn his degree in interactive performance art,  a major he created that combines aspects of art, theater and philosophy. Taylor’s senior thesis is an ambitious project, in which he hopes to take four of the largest blank canvasses he can afford into each quadrant of Washington and encourage passers-by to “express themselves using paint and brushes.”

He hasn’t had time to start that undertaking, of course. He’s concentrated on the one thing he has yet to achieve in college wrestling.

After that, he’s planning on giving a cappella another shot.

lemaire@umdbk.com