Saturday's Loyer Reunion comes as Purdue's Fletcher Loyer has been surging

Years back, long before he’d move to Fort Wayne and ultimately land at Purdue, Fletcher Loyer was catching some static from fans during one of his games for Clarkston High School in Michigan. He was a sophomore at the time.

“I did hear someone yell, ‘You’ll never live up to your brother,” Loyer said. “I had 42 points that game.”

Foster Loyer preceded his younger brother at Clarkston by several years, enjoying a prodigious career there en route to beginning his college career at Michigan State, then moving on to Davidson. It was never really all that much of a competition between the two boys.

Saturday, for the first time ever, it will be, as this weekend’s Indy Classic game between No. 1 Purdue and Davidson will pit the two brothers against one another for the first time in their respective basketball careers.

It will also draw attention to the fact that Purdue’s Loyer has been one of the better freshmen in college basketball to this point and a driving force behind the Boilermakers’ improbable success so far.

Fletcher Loyer is the Boilermakers’ second-leading scorer, already one of its most important players, and somehow a freshman ball-handler whose turned the ball over just seven times in 279 minutes. The fit has been seamless.

The most important statistic: Purdue is 10-0, an impossibility if Loyer and fellow freshman guard Braden Smith would have come on board looking or acting like freshmen in any way, shape or form.

“Having the confidence of the coaches and the other players coming here has been huge,” Loyer said. “Not every program has that. It’s been perfect for me. I know what I can do out there, but it ultimately comes down to them trusting me.”

Confidence has bred confidence, and Fletcher Loyer’s never seems to waver. He plays the game with a certain calmness, a quiet certainty, and sort of a smugness, really, that belies both norms and his age.

Nothing new for Loyer, as Matt Painter has known since the days he first started recruiting the guard.

“The first thing I thought of was how confident he came off in himself,” Painter said. “That’s something that gets lost sometimes in evaluation, where they might have a false bravado about themselves. They want to talk, they want to put up three goggles, say something to guys after they make a shot.

“Then there’s just guys who flat-out believe in themselves and (nothing else) matters. He was one of those guys.”

The demeanor may have been the difference for Purdue at Nebraska, where a dizzying run of second-half three-point shooting by the Cornhuskers erased a 14-point second-half Boilermaker lead and made that game a toss-up in the final 10 minutes.

Throughout a close game — in his first Big Ten road game — Loyer “wanted the ball,” as Painter put it, and delivered time and again when Purdue needed responses in the first game this season where the ball was effectively taken out of Zach Edey’s hands.

Loyer was that solution. He scored 22 points, every one of which mattered.

He never flinched.

“Whether it was high school student sections yelling at me, or the crowd here at Mackey getting really loud,” Loyer said, “I just try to keep that same calm energy and give the guys around me that same mojo.”

UP-SIDE REMAINS

What’s funny about this season for Loyer is that he’s averaging 13-plus points per game, legitimately swinging outcomes in his team’s favor and doing everything asked of him, and he’s not even really started making shots yet, at least to the level he’s capable.

Look, Loyer’s 34-and-a-half percent three-point shooting on immense volume is a number any freshman would happily take, but will represent his floor at the college level, anything but his ceiling.

But Loyer is in this strange position. He was one of the truly elite shooters in his class nationally and for the first time in a long time, he’s occasionally open. In high school, he routinely had the attention of entire defenses, especially his senior year after Luke Goode left Homestead for Illinois.

“I just have to be ready to shoot at all times,” Loyer said, with the context behind that statement being very different now.

Loyer will get his shots up Saturday in Gainbridge Fieldhouse. So will Loyer.

The public address announcer best be prepared to keep the two straight, because the name will be coming up a lot.