As fourth-graders, Ben Richardson and Clayton Custer reached the pinnacle of their youth sports careers.
At Spiece Fieldhouse in Fort Wayne, Ind., the preteen teammates won a youth basketball national championship.
“We were going out on a national stage and beating a lot of really good teams,” Custer recalled. “Those were some of the coolest moments.”
Sound familiar?
Loyola teammates Richardson and Custer have been repeating that success since they were around 9. They won another national championship as sixth-graders for the Overland Park Huskies. At Blue Valley Northwest High School, they went 94-6 and won two Kansas state championships.
They topped all of those experiences together Thursday evening when they helped No. 11 seed Loyola upset No. 6 Miami in the NCAA tournament, propelling them to Saturday’s second-round matchup against No. 3 Tennessee.
“Every time me and Ben have played together our whole lives, we’ve been on winning teams,” Custer said.
They were in the same first-grade class, lived a mile from each other and began playing basketball together as third-graders.
When Richardson found Custer in the corner against Miami for a game-tying 3-pointer with 1 minute, 12 seconds to play, it was the greatest pass and shot combination of their lives.
But it was nothing new.
“We had a big game for a conference championship, and it came down to the wire,” said Ed Fritz, their high school coach. “Clay had the ball in his hands for the last shot, he drove, Ben came over to help. He found Ben for the layup and we won. He got fouled and (made the free throw) and we won by three points. They just have an innate ability with each other.”
Fritz and Richardson’s dad coached their youth team that won those national championships. Richardson credits Fritz’s intensity with them — even as youngsters — for their tenacity.
Fritz, who has coached Blue Valley Northwest for 16 years, got in his car Wednesday night and drove nine hours to Dallas to catch Thursday’s game. “I didn’t even bring clothes,” he said.
The duo told him after the game, “We played like we did when we played for you.” Overland Park, a suburb of Kansas City, is celebrating another state title Blue Valley Northwest won last weekend and is giddy about Loyola’s run.
Ramblers teammates joke that Custer, a redshirt junior, and Richardson, a senior, have some kind of telekinetic connection on the court.
“They do everything together,” guard Marques Townes said. “They’re like brothers. They should be brothers, actually. The connection they have on the court is amazing. Being out there with them and how they find each other on the court is just mind-blowing to me.”
Custer and Richardson combine for 8.2 assists per game — many to each other.
“I’ve had so many times people come up to me and say, ‘Wow, how did you know Clay was going to be there?’ ” Richardson said. “ ‘How he did he know you were going to come behind that screen and he was going to find you like that?’ It’s just chemistry we’ve worked on countless hours in the gym.”
They parted ways initially for college as Custer went to Iowa State and Richardson headed for Rogers Park. Custer played in only 12 games as a freshman with limited minutes and decided to find a program where he could make a more significant impact.
Before he even received his release from Iowa State, Custer confided in Richardson, who immediately started recruiting him.
“He was like, ‘You have to come on a visit,’ ” Custer said. “He basically said even if you don’t like Loyola, just come visit and we’ll have a great time.”
Coach Porter Moser saw Custer play in high school when he recruited Richardson. When Custer got his release, “it was game on,” Moser said. “It was the foot on the gas pedal.”
Custer committed to Loyola on that visit.
Three years later, Custer is the Missouri Valley Conference player of the year and Richardson the league's defensive player of the year.
After the Ramblers won the MVC tournament, the duo walked beside each other from the court to a media interview room. They told each other: “Man, can you believe this? We’ve won since we were in third grade.”
Moser watched the scene unfold with pride.
“It was the most genuine, little-kid moment of two grown guys just sharing it,” he said.
Richardson marveled at the experiences he and Custer have enjoyed together.
“There’s no way for it to set in now,” he said. “We’ve had countless lifelong memories already. This will go at the top of the list, I think. We’re not done yet. We want to make some more good ones.”
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