ACU Basketball Adds 2 Transfers
By: Lance Fleming, ACU Assistant Director of Athletics for Media Relations
Updated: June 20, 2012
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
rebounder. 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."
