SAINT LOUIS -- After the buzzer sounded, Clayton Custer began to wander. Loyola’s consummate leader circled the Enterprise Center court slowly—hands on his hips, mouth full of jersey, eyes fixed in a thousand-yard stare—knowing the finality that awaited him the second he stepped outside the lines.



He walked through the handshake line, congratulating Bradley on their 53-51 victory in Saturday’s Arch Madness semifinals. Then he covered his face with his shirt and turned back toward the locker room, internalizing a reality where Loyola would not be returning to the NCAA Tournament to follow up last year’s miraculous run.



“We had a goal, and we didn’t reach it, and that hurts a lot,” Custer said later. “This hurts worse than any loss that I’ve ever had, other than the Final Four loss last year.”



The shadow cast by last year’s success hung over the entire season, and both players and coaches admit feeling an enormous pressure to live up to new expectations. Pressure led to strain, strain led to losses, and losses led to waning confidence up and down a roster full of underclassmen. Much of the responsibility to steady the team fell to Custer, the fifth-year senior point guard who became something of a confidence therapist as the season went along.



When highly anticipated transfer Aher Uguak struggled early in the season, Custer dropped him a late night text. “We need you, we all know how good you are,” he remembers saying. Another time it was Bruno Skokna, a junior sharpshooter who lost confidence in his outside shot but was told repeatedly by Custer, sometimes aggressively, to keep shooting. Freshman Franklin Agunanne shared a similar experience when he found himself not playing many minutes.



“I kept thinking about basketball, like am I fit to play in this league,” Agunanne said. “He’d text me or let me know he cares about me. He told me it’s just mental, you’ve just got to be patient.”



The word most often used to describe Custer is inherently indefinable yet perfectly fitting: “intangibles.” All agree Custer’s impact on a game goes beyond what can be captured in the box score, and the Ramblers’ rally to win a share of the Missouri Valley regular season championship this season was a testament to the ineffable leadership of Custer and fellow senior Marques Townes.



“Intangibles matter,” said Bradley head coach Brian Wardle after Saturday’s game. “Intangibles, the leadership, the hard work ethic, the willingness to be unselfish and sacrifice – all those matter, and you can tell their success at Loyola has been a lot because of [Custer and Townes].”



The decisive play of the regular season came in the final moments of a road game against Northern Iowa, with the title on the line, when Custer switched onto UNI’s AJ Green after a ball screen and forced him into a contested jumper. The shot missed and Custer gave a huge fist pump in celebration. Coach Porter Moser said he received messages from a handful of coaching contemporaries after the game, who showed the clip to their respective teams because Custer’s attitude was unaffected by his 1 for 10 shooting performance. “It was all about the win for Clayton, that’s what makes him special,” Moser said.



Thankfully, confidence has never been a problem for Custer. The youngest of three children in a sports-obsessed household, it didn’t take long for young Clayton to show his natural athletic ability. His mother remembers him winning a three-point contest in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in the third grade, and by the time he reached high school he was a two-sport star at Blue Valley Northwest High School in Overland Park, Kansas.



Despite scholarship offers in both baseball and basketball, Custer committed to playing basketball by his sophomore year, ignoring the assessments his parents received that he “looked like more of a baseball player” because he was a 6-foot-1 and white. He heard the phrase less after winning consecutive state championships in the state’s highest classification as a junior and senior, playing alongside future Loyola Rambler Ben Richardson.



Even during a freshman year at Iowa State where he developed mononucleosis three weeks before the season, and saw his advocate and primary recruiter, T.J. Otzelberger, leave to become the head coach at South Dakota State, Custer says his confidence remained intact. He appeared in just 12 games and averaged 5.8 minutes. When he decided to transfer after the season, he assured his parents they wouldn’t need to drive up for the meeting because he was comfortable handling the situation on his own.



The day after obtaining his release Custer received a visit from Moser, who drove to Ames, Iowa, immediately to persuade Custer to join Richardson at Loyola. He promised Custer he had frozen all other recruiting, and took it one step further by driving four more hours that same afternoon to visit Custer’s parents.



“It’s hard when you transfer to trust anybody the second time around,” Custer’s mother Terri said. But as the three sat in the family’s kitchen and talked, Moser began to win them over. “We got the sense that he really wanted Clay to come,” said Galen Custer, his father.



Custer committed soon after on his official visit. Over the next three years, he developed into a star for the Ramblers, winning Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year honors last season in addition to numerous other awards.



Even then, he possessed a particular brand of stardom. His scoring average barely topped 13 points per game, signaling how rarely he acted outside of the flow of Loyola’s offensive system. Still, the team came to count on Custer’s shooting, whether it was his 45 percent average from three-point range or his clutch jump shot to seal the team’s second round NCAA Tournament victory over Tennessee. Whatever the team needed on its way to the Final Four, Custer seemed ready to provide.



Which is why this season came as a surprise to many. Carrying the pressure of the entire team on his shoulders, Custer appeared affected by it personally for the first time. He faced increased attention from opponents, often dealing with a defender face-guarding him for the full 40 minutes. As a result, there were nine conference games in which he made two or fewer field goals. In one loss at Illinois State, he went 1 of 12 from beyond the arc.



Meanwhile, Townes and sophomore big man Cameron Krutwig emerged as primary scorers during conference play, causing Custer to reconsider his role in the offense. Rather than compete for shots, Custer relinquished time as the team’s primary creator.



“There were a couple games where I left feeling like maybe we lost, if I would’ve played half as good as I’m capable of playing… like the Illinois State game I couldn’t make a shot,” Custer said after one game. “I’ve always wanted to do what’s best for the team, that’s how I am as a person, so if I have to sacrifice a little bit for us to be the best we are I’m going to do that.”



Deferring to Townes undoubtedly led to the regular season title, even if it meant Townes was the one who hoisted the Larry Bird trophy at Thursday’s Missouri Valley awards luncheon. Moser said Custer was the first to jump up and give Townes a hug when he announced to the team that Townes had won the player of the year award.



In Friday’s quarterfinal, Custer needed only six shots during Loyola’s 67-54 win over Valparaiso, content to dish out five assists. Having come this far, Custer doubled down on his promise to do whatever it took to win. After all, he finally saw his teammates playing with confidence.



“This year we have guys who have done it and we have a taste of it and we don’t want to go back to doing something else, and we also have way more younger guys who haven’t experienced it, so they might not understand what it takes really to win this tournament in order to go to there,” Custer said. “Especially after the experience of last year I don’t want to do anything else other than go to the NCAA Tournament, and I’ll be upset if we don’t, so just making sure everybody knows how important every little detail is for every single game.”



The tables turned on Saturday. Townes shot 3 of 17 from the floor, and Krutwig was limited by a turned right ankle. Deference was no longer an option. With 39 seconds remaining and the Ramblers trailing by one, the ball was back in Custer’s hands. He drove hard to the rim, getting by his defender mere steps from the hoop. He was fouled.



Loyola inbounded the ball to Custer once again at the top of the key, and once again he got by his defender, streaking down the left side of the lane for a game-tying layup. He was fouled again.



A third time he received an inbounds pass, now with less than 10 seconds to play. This time, he’s unable to get by his defender. He tries a crossover, goes between his legs, in-and-out. Nothing is working. Time is running out. He raises his head and sees Townes waiting the corner. Perhaps out of sheer desperation, he defers one final time. Townes’ shot at the buzzer ricochets of the rim. The buzzer sounds. Custer begins to wander around the court.



“I feel bad for him, I know how hard he works,” said a tear-eyed Jake Baughman, Custer’s roommate, in the locker room after the game. “This season…it’s not over but it feels over to us right now.”



Loyola must regroup, somehow, and prepare for postseason play in the NIT. But regardless of the result, Custer and Townes’ legacies at Loyola are secure, and Custer’s value to the program is unquantifiable.



“Every win that we’re going to have next year, they’re going to have their names on it,” Krutwig said. “And down the road they’re never going to be forgotten.”