Photo by: Gary Rhodes
Wildcats add two transfer guards to 2012-13 roster
6/20/2012 4:46:00 PM | Men's Basketball
ABILENE – ACU men's basketball coach Joe Golding continued the makeover of his team's roster on Wednesday as he announced the addition of transfer guards Eric Lawton and Elliott Lloyd.
Lawton transfers to ACU from Arkansas-Little Rock where he played one season, while Lloyd transers to ACU from Northern Colorado where he played for three seasons. Both Lawton and Lloyd have just one season of eligibility remaining.
In 18 games for the Bears last season, Lloyd averaged a career-best 7.9 points per game, while also dishing out 2.6 assists per game and grabbing 2.5 rebounds per game. He had a season-best 16 points in a 99-94 loss to Idaho State on Jan. 26.
Lloyd shot 44.8 percent from behind the 3-point arc (26 of 58), one of the top marks in the Big Sky Conference. As a sophomore in 2010-11, Lloyd played in all 32 games with 31 starts for the Bears. He averaged 7.5 points, 2.9 rebounds and 3.3 assists per game.
Lloyd helped lead the Bears to the NCAA Tournament in 2010-11, averaging 4.4 assists per game in the team's final eight games of the season as it made its post-season push. He scored nine points and had three assists in the Bears' second-round loss to San Diego State.
A native of Houston (graduate of Klein Forest High School), Lloyd will graduate from Northern Colorado later this summer and will be in graduate school at ACU.
"Elliott does a lot on the floor to really make a team better," Golding said. "He can score, he can distribute the basketball and he is a really good defender. He played in the NCAA Tournament two years ago, so he adds his big-game experience to our group of guys."
Lawton was recruited to Little-Rock by Golding when he was an assistant under head coach Steve Shields. He was one of the top high school players in the country coming out of West Valley High School in Moreno Valley, Calif., in 2009.
The No. 28 shooting guard in the country and three-star recruit by Rivals, he originally signed with San Diego State, but instead played his first two seasons at Mt. San Jacinto College.
As a freshman at Mt. San Jacinto he averaged 9.5 points, 2.2 assists and 3.1 rebounds per game and then followed that in 2010-11 by averaging 14 points, 3.2 assists and 5.3 rebounds per game. A first team all-Foothill Conference selection, he led the Eagles to the Elite Eight of the California State Tournament.
Last year at Little Rock, Lawton played in 29 of the Trojans' 31 games and averaged 2.4 points per game.
"Eric is a very dynamic player who excels at getting to the rim," Golding said. "He had a very good junior college career and then got stuck behind an all-Sun Belt Conference guard (D'Andre Williams) at Little Rock. But he comes very highly recommended from my former boss (Shields), and I hope we can help him end his college career with a big season.
"Both of these guys (Lawton and Lloyd) were very highly recruited, and rightfully so," Golding said. "(ACU assistant coach) Brian Burton did a great job working with those two and convincing them that ACU would be the right place for them."
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