It was March 23, 2007 when freshman guard Tajuan Porter inspired the Oregon men’s basketball team to a Sweet Sixteen victory over UNLV. That evening, a 15-year-old high school freshman named Johnathan Loyd sat at his home in Las Vegas watching the hometown Rebels come up short.
But it wasn’t UNLV that caught Loyd’s attention.
Porter, the smallest player in the Pacific-10 Conference — standing just 5-foot-6 — tied the NCAA Regional record with eight three-pointers, finishing with a game-high 33 points. Porter and diminutive senior guard Aaron Brooks put Oregon basketball back on the map that season, and the teenager from Las Vegas took notice.
Four years later, Loyd is the starting point guard for the Ducks, excelling in his own first season in the collegiate ranks. His lack of size is overshadowed by his dart-quick speed that even Washington star Isaiah Thomas has been victim to this season. But the path to the team’s overall success — they’ve won five of their last seven games — has only been defined recently.
When Loyd made his first official visit to Eugene last June, most of last year’s squad was still on campus. But when he returned again in September, the Ducks had lost five players, including several starters, and the opportunity for Loyd to earn significant playing time early was never in question.
“We still got a chance,” Loyd said, thinking back to those initial workouts in October. “We’ve just got to play a different way.”
But for Loyd, success, and winning, has always been a top priority. He averages just five points and two rebounds per night from the point guard position, but the intangibles he brings don’t necessarily transfer to the stat sheet. In high school, however, Loyd had no trouble filling up a box score, or a win column for that matter.
Loyd attended Bishop Gorman High School, a college preparatory school in Las Vegas, which attracted the Loyd family with high-quality coaching and superior education.
Over the next four years, Loyd helped Bishop Gorman build one of the most feared basketball programs in Nevada. He aided the Gaels to 102 wins in four years, 60 in the final two and back-to-back state championships in Nevada’s Class 4A competition.
But the Gaels weren’t always so dominant.
“My freshman year we didn’t really stick out like that,” Loyd said. “We were kind of in the middle of Vegas, we didn’t go to state or anything like that.”
Loyd got off to a sluggish start in the classroom too, where eventually his parents, Michael and Pamela, demanded more from their youngest son. He returned to school with the same passion he brought to the hardwood, establishing respectable marks over the next three years, graduating with a 3.3 GPA.
“He’s just a great all-around kid and has fun with everything he does,” Bishop Gorman basketball coach Grant Rice told the Las Vegas Sun. “But he is really competitive when it comes down to it and does all of the little things it takes to win.”
He finished his senior season averaging 14.0 points and 8.2 assists, capping his career with a 21-point victory over Canyon Springs High School in the state title game. But while Bishop Gorman was becoming one of the premier prep programs in the nation, Loyd wasn’t attracting much attention from college recruiters.
College basketball runs in the Loyd family, with his brother Michael, 22, joining the team at Brigham Young University out of high school, and Kevin, 21, attending Grambling State. (The two now play together at Midwestern State in Texas.)
The youngest of the three, Loyd was getting early offers from such low-major schools as Oakland, Northern Arizona, Cal Poly, UC Riverside, Eastern Washington and Cal State Northridge, but the four-year varsity starter wanted more.
“My senior year, during the fall, I took a couple visits to low-major schools,” Loyd said. “And I was like, ‘This is all I’m going to get. This is it for me.’”
But when he wrapped up his final season with the Gaels and earned state tournament MVP honors, the recruiting whirlwind came storming through Loyd’s front door. He received more than 20 offers from Division I programs, including Pac-10 schools Washington, Washington State and UCLA.
Yet it was Loyd’s relationship with then-Creighton coach Dana Altman that stuck out. He had no interest in playing at Creighton in the Missouri Valley Conference, but when he found out Altman was hired at Oregon, Loyd decided to follow along.
Altman was willing to take a chance on the 5-foot-8 speedster, making him the first signee in the 2011 recruiting class. But before inking with the Ducks, basketball wasn’t Loyd’s only option for Division I athletics.
While basketball is Loyd’s first love, he decided to join the Gaels football team three weeks into his senior season. The team was in desperate need of a kick returner, and Loyd’s friends encouraged him to come out. Head coach Tony Sanchez offered him a spot as cornerback, too, but he was more interested in fielding kicks. It had been more than three years since Loyd strapped the pads on, yet he didn’t miss a beat.
Loyd finished the year with five punt returns for touchdowns, good enough for first team all-state honors, while Bishop Gorman tacked on a 4A state championship.
“The scary thing is that he could play Division I football, too,” Sanchez told the Las Vegas Sun. “He’s one incredible athlete.”
He entertained football offers from Oklahoma, Illinois, UTEP and UNLV, but knew in his heart basketball was where he wanted to stay. And when he made his decision to attend Oregon official, Chip Kelly and the football staff even took a solid look at Loyd.
Loyd has called the confines of Matthew Knight Arena home for the past several weeks, enjoying every second of Oregon’s ascension to a conference contender. He’s also alleviated pressure from junior point guard Malcolm Armstead, and the pair has found a way to coexist on the court.
“It feels like everything runs smoother when Malcolm’s on the floor,” Loyd said, “‘cause he just knows the game well and he just tells everybody where to go.”
Armstead has relinquished his stranglehold on the starting spot, making room for Loyd, who has started 11 straight games for the Ducks. Battling a nagging ankle injury has slowed the freshman recently, but it hasn’t changed Altman’s expectations.
“He just needs to be real choosy on his shot selection,” Altman said, “and then make the shots.”
As Oregon hits the final stretch of the season, Loyd knows he’ll need to be ready to push the tempo and boost his teammates with distant hopes of a postseason appearance.
“This year, if we keep playing well,” Loyd said, “you never know what could happen.”
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