SAN ANTONIO — Ben Richardson and Clayton Custer’s lockers stand beside each other. The best friends sit no more than 3 feet apart, but a horde of cameramen stand between them. They hear each other better than they see each other.

A video is played for Richardson. The kids from Overland Park, Kan., haven’t hit puberty yet. Custer has braces. The frosted tips in their hair are a few years away.

The video keeps playing. Richardson’s smile grows wider.

“Clay getting offensive rebounds, that’s a rare appearance,” Richardson cracks.

The 6-foot-1 Custer overhears, and interjects.

“I was big back then!” he shouts back from his own media scrum.

The boys who met in the first grade are the biggest stars of the Final Four. The teenagers who were laughed at when they would say they would play Division I basketball have giant pictures of themselves hanging from their hotel. The best friends from the Kansas City suburbs, who took turns imitating Mario Chalmers’ game-tying 3 from the 2008 national championship, now have kids copying Loyola Chicago’s last-second shots in their driveways.

“I’ve talked to Ben about it, it seems like fate,” Custer said. “It’s crazy that we’re here in the Final Four. It seems like all the stars aligned for this to happen.

“It’s really special we’re able to live this right now. We’ve come a long way.”

Richardson and Custer first played together in the third grade, and one year later won a U.S. Specialty Sports Association national championship in Fort Wayne, Ind. In the sixth grade, they did it again.

At Blue Valley Northwest High School, they went 94-6, and claimed the Kansas state title as juniors and seniors.

“We were always on good teams back in the day,” Custer said. “A lot of the values we learned then really led us to this point. Those days shaped us.”

And then they split.

Richardson went to Loyola. His friend went to Iowa State.

But after averaging fewer than six minutes in 12 games with the Cyclones, Custer began looking for a new place to play.

“I take like 97, 98 percent of the credit for recruitment,” Richardson said. “I said, ‘Come visit, you’ll get an expenses-paid trip to Chicago. We’ll have a good time, me and you, and if that’s the worst that happens’…

“He fell in love with it just like I did. I had a feeling he would. Once he really thought about coming in here, we thought we could do some special things.”

This season, Custer was named the Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year. Richardson was named the league’s top defender.

The Ramblers have won a school-record 32 games, and made the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1985, leading Loyola Chicago to its first Final Four since 1963.

The memories of the past few weeks have piled up fast, and need to last. Custer’s transfer gave him one more season, but Richardson will soon be finished with school.

“Growing up, me and Clay, since we could dribble a basketball, we’ve been dreaming of a moment like this,” Richardson said. “To be able to grow and work and develop with my best friend and make it to this stage, it’s something that’s tough to describe and won’t set in for a while.”

So many nights, they return to their hotel room, and try to process what happened that day.

They laugh like little kids, when a fan stops Custer, and asks him to take a picture of her and Richardson, not realizing who he was.

They feel like little kids, when another last-second shot sends them to the next round, when they’re overwhelmed by the empty seats of a football stadium.

They act like little kids, slapping each other’s heads because they’ve been doing it before they knew how else to express themselves.

“One of the coolest moments I’ve had with those two was after the Missouri Valley championship, we cut down the nets … and I’m walking behind Clayton and Ben, and it was the most real little kid moment you’ve ever seen,” coach Porter Moser said. “They had the hats with the nets in it, they’re walking, hitting each other going, ‘Can you believe this, man? We’ve been winning since we were in third grade.’ ”