Head coach Lane Loyd and his 2008-09 Lady Tigers spent their first year together pretty much just getting to know each other. Loyd was hired late in the recruiting process during the summer of 2008, which led to the first-year coach and his staff not having much of an opportunity to develop relationships either on the recruiting trail or with the players already on campus..

In coming back to ETBU, Loyd returned to a place where he enjoyed one season as an assistant coach for Tigers head coach Bert West back in 2001-02. And after being out of coaching while working as an admissions counselor for University of the Ozarks’ teacher education program in Clarksville, Ark., Loyd says the challenge of putting the Lady Tigers back among the elite in the ASC as well as the opportunity to come home to East Texas were things he could not resist when considering the opportunity.

“This is home for us,” he says. “We go into this with our eyes open and knowing exactly what this university if about. There’s a spirit about campus that you don’t find most places. It’s a great place to be.”

Loyd took over a program at ETBU just one year removed from a 22-win season and undefeated run as ASC East champion against division opponents in 2006-07. The Lady Tigers finished that season with a 22-5 mark and were a missed layup at the buzzer from advancing to the program’s first championship game appearance as a member of the ASC. That year marked the end of a three-year run to the postseason for ETBU, including back-to-back tournament semifinal appearances.

But after having been favored to win the East again in 2007-08, the program slipped to 8-16 and missed the postseason for the first time in four years.

“This program has had some success in the past and was very close to climbing the mountain very recently, so it’s been proven that it can be done,” says Loyd. “We’ve got to recruit the right players and keep them around to grow in our program as we move forward, and we’ve already started the process.

“The main thing I am shooting for, of course, is to win. That’s the bottom line for me. I want us to win in everything we do, on the court and in the classroom. Every single member of this program must be committed to winning in all areas. We want our program to be fun and exciting for our players and our fans and winning makes things a lot more fun than the alternative.”

Loyd has certainly been around winners throughout his career. As a player at the high school level, he was an all-state point guard for his father Ken at Avinger in 1986 before moving on to play collegiately at Austin College. While in college he spent his summers working basketball camps for some of the game’s most well-known and respected legends, including John Wooden, Pat Riley, Jim Harrick, Bill Walton and Magic Johnson.

Loyd remembers driving Wooden home every day from the camps, soaking up the knowledge on a one-on-one basis from one of the game’s most high-profile winning coaches.

Loyd entered the coaching field and was on staff at David Lipscomb University in Tennessee for two years, from 1993-95. While at Lipscomb, Loyd worked under coach Don Meyer, who in 2008-09 became the all-time leader in collegiate coaching victories. Under Meyer, Lipscomb was the winningest program at any level of college basketball during an 18-year period, averaging 31 wins and just three losses during that time.

Loyd has also spent 10 years as a high school head coach, with stops at Decatur, Avinger, Chapel Hill, McLeod and Baird. Following his one year on staff at ETBU, in which the Tigers went 12-12 but established the core of a team that went on to win the program’s only ASC East championship to date the next season, Loyd returned to finish graduate work at Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas.

Lane and his wife, Denise, have a son, Chiam. The Loyds are members of Immanuel Baptist Church in Marshall.