Boyd feels connected again

PHOENIX -- USC’s traveling party this weekend includes two old friends who had lost touch with the program in recent years, and Bob and Betty Boyd couldn’t be more pleased.

The Boyds were fixtures at USC practically from the time Bob starred for the Trojans in the early 1950s until his resignation as coach in 1979, but they never felt as welcome during the last few decades as they have since Tim Floyd became coach three years ago.

“Tim has invited us to go to every game, including the Washingtons and the Oregons,” Bob Boyd said Friday morning at the team hotel in Tucson. “I told him he could go ahead and go to Pullman. I didn’t want to do that.”

Boyd has attended nearly every game and numerous practices at the Galen Center, making the drive from his home in Palm Desert. Boyd, 77, also has headed a new tradition of introducing former Trojans standouts to the crowd at halftime during home games.

Floyd says he relishes the input of USC’s third-winningest basketball coach, who was 216-131 in 13 seasons and took his last Trojans team to the second round of the NCAA tournament in 1979 before losing to DePaul.

“He’s one of the great coaches who ever coached, and he’s a resource for me and an honest resource, a guy who could not possibly lie about anything and certainly about our team because he wants us to do well,” Floyd said. “Sometimes it’s painful to listen to his observations, but I welcome them.”

Boyd wore a pained expression Friday when he spoke of his greatest regret: resigning as USC coach. He was in the last year of a five-year contract and was tiring of the uncertainty surrounding his future when he told Dick Perry, the athletic director at the time, that he was leaving late in the 1978-79 season.

Boyd stayed on to coach the rest of the season and the Trojans won their last six games to reach the NCAA tournament. That’s when Boyd said he told Perry in the bathroom of the team hotel that he had changed his mind and wanted to stay at USC.

It wasn’t the last time Boyd changed his mind. Two days after the season ended, Boyd returned from a recruiting trip and told Perry that he wasn’t coming back.

“Every time it comes up, I just think, my God, how stupid I was,” Boyd said. “We can all look back over our lives and identify the mistakes we’ve made, and I’ve made a lot of them, but none bigger than the idea of walking out of there.”

Had he stayed, Boyd said, he “might be the athletic director today, who knows? I went there, played basketball there and coached there.”

Instead, he went on to coaching stints at Mississippi State, Riverside Community College and Chapman before becoming an assistant at Utah State and Louisiana State.

Boyd said the best part of reconnecting with the program is seeing old friends and meeting new ones.

“It’s meant that he’s younger than he was about three years ago,” Betty Boyd said. “The more you’re around young people, the longer you stay young.”

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TODAY

at Arizona State, 3 p.m. PST, FSN Prime Ticket

Site -- Wells Fargo Arena, Tempe, Ariz.

Radio -- 710.

Records -- USC 18-9 overall, 9-6 Pacific 10 Conference; Arizona State 17-10, 7-8.

Update -- The Trojans are three games above .500 in Pac-10 play for the first time this season and could clinch a winning conference record and probable NCAA tournament invitation with a victory today. Freshman forward Davon Jefferson did not practice Friday as a precaution after injuring his left calf against Arizona but is expected to play.

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