Mayo, Downey get to duel again

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Greg Oden, who would become the top pick in the NBA draft, was there. So were eventual NBA first-round selections Mike Conley Jr. and Rudy Gay.

But for a few moments at the NBA Players Assn. Camp at Virginia Commonwealth University in the summer of 2004, all eyes were squarely focused on Devan Downey and O.J. Mayo.

“I’ll never forget it,” Downey recalled Friday. “It was a one-on-one drill and we just went at it. We wanted to guard each other, and we didn’t want to guard anybody else. We just took over the drill and went at it, and it was entertainment for the rest of the camp.”

The encounter also resonated with Mayo, who called Downey “the toughest guard I had ever played against. . . . He’s really quick, he’s really heady, he can knock down the jumper and make players around him better.”

The elite guards will square off again tonight when Mayo’s USC Trojans play at Downey’s South Carolina Gamecocks.

“I’m going to get my shot at him, and he’s going to get his shot at me,” said Downey, who might start the game matched against USC’s Daniel Hackett.

Downey took a circuitous route to Columbia. He graduated from nearby Chester High -- “It’s 45 minutes away, 35 if you speed,” he said -- before enrolling at Cincinnati, where Mayo was playing for North College Hill High.

Downey and Mayo often played in pickup games at the Bearcats’ gym, and Downey would stop by Mayo’s practices to inquire about his college recruiting.

“At the time I was at Cincinnati, so I was trying to sell our program,” Downey said.

Neither player wound up there. Mayo transferred to his hometown Huntington (W.Va.) High for his senior year before coming to USC, and Downey left Cincinnati after interim coach Andy Kennedy departed for Mississippi.

Both have had impressive showings at their new schools. Mayo is averaging 24 points and seven rebounds. Downey scored 24 points in the Gamecocks’ opening victory over South Carolina State and came within one rebound of logging a triple-double during a 61-point rout of the Citadel.

“O.J.’s been telling me for a long time that he’s a terrific player and is as good as any of the great point guards in the country this year,” USC Coach Tim Floyd said of Downey, “and after watching film I’d have to agree with him on that.”

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Floyd and South Carolina Coach Dave Odom are longtime friends who Odom said “ran the road together and recruited at the same sites” as assistant coaches.

Floyd presented Odom with what Odom’s wife Lynn called “the nicest cuff links in Los Angeles” last year in appreciation for the Gamecocks’ willingness to be USC’s first opponent in the history of the Galen Center. Odom said he would wear the gift tonight, the first time in his 31 years of coaching that he has worn cuff links.

Last summer, Odom thought Floyd had handed him a recruiting coup until discovering the prospect had 13 Fs on his transcript.

“I picked up the phone and called Floyd and said, ‘No wonder you gave me the guy,’ ” Odom said. “ ‘Not even Southern Cal could get this guy in.’ ”

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TONIGHT

at South Carolina, 4:30 PST

Site -- Colonial Center, Columbia, S.C.

Radio -- 710.

Records -- USC 1-1, South Carolina 2-0.

Update -- The sting of last year’s overtime loss to the Gamecocks is still fresh for the returning Trojans, who hoped to open the Galen Center in more memorable fashion in a game they had dedicated to slain teammate Ryan Francis. “You realize that they came in and beat you on your floor, and you want to give them the same feeling,” USC sophomore forward Taj Gibson said.

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ben.bolch@latimes.com