Loyola-Chicago Teammates Have Been Winning Together Since Third Grade

Loyola-Chicago’s Clayton Custer, left, and Ben Richardson have been teammates since third grade.Ben Richardson and Clayton Custer look exactly like what they are: a couple of gym rats. As kids, they slung on their backpacks and dribbled basketballs on their way to school. They wore each other’s Kansas driveways smooth shooting thousands of jumpers and playing countless one-on-one games.

Richardson and Custer first became teammates as third graders, with jerseys that hung to their knees, a time when both needed every ounce of their little boy strength just to get the ball to the rim. They won their first national title as fourth graders, at a youth tournament in Indiana. They picked up…