It’s 10 minutes before midnight after one of UL’s toughest losses of the season, and a ball can be heard bouncing inside a mostly empty Cajundome.

Two-and-a-half hours or so earlier the Ragin’ Cajuns had just fallen by two in overtime to Sun Belt Conference West Division-leader UALR, and Elfrid Payton was distraught.

He had just missed four free throws in the final 46.9 seconds of regulation, going 2-for-6 from the line in that span, including 0-for-2 with 19.6 seconds to go and UL up by six.

UALR hit two 3-pointers before time expired to force OT, and Payton’s problems continued, including a missed layup and, with just more than 10 seconds left, a critical turnover, his fifth that night.

Afterward, the backup point guard was practically disconsolate.

"My teammates gave me a lot of encouragement, and so did my coaches," said Payton, the lone boy from a family with five sisters. "They kept telling me, ‘It’s over.’"

For this mature-beyond-his-years true freshman, however, it was only just beginning.

At the time of the Feb. 9 loss, Payton was still just 17 years old.

But with a birthday today, and with only one game remaining in UL’s regular season, Saturday at home vs. UL Monroe, he has finally turned 18.

No more baby jokes. No more asking if he’s turned 12 yet.

No way he played the first 29 games of his college career before he was old enough to vote, is there?

Actually, there is — and to Payton it’s not too huge of a deal, because he’s been playing up in age for as long he can remember.

"I always had to grow up fast," he said.

Always among the youngest in his class.

Always the one with summertime teammates who were a grade or two ahead of him.

"You just deal with it," he said.

"I had to kind of figure it out myself," added Payton, whose father, a Gretna native with the same name, played at Grambling before a longtime career as a defensive end in the Canadian Football League. "It put me in situations were I can succeed, I guess, against older people."

It was only around his junior year in high school that Payton started to wonder if being the young one wasn’t so dandy.

He wasn’t drawing much attention from college recruiters yet, and was beginning to think that perhaps a year at prep school would serve him well.

It wasn’t because he was behind mentally, though.

"I like to think I have a pretty high basketball IQ," the soft-spoken Payton said.

It’s just that his lanky frame was far from physically complete.

But then came a solid summer of AAU play before his senior season, and some added strength as well, and it wasn’t long before Payton was thinking, he said, "’No need to stop now.’"

***

Coming out of Ehret High near the New Orleans-area community of Marrero, where he was a district Player of the Year at the Class 5A level for a 30-4 team as a senior, Payton chose an offer from the Cajuns over one from Xavier of New Orleans.

The fit just felt right, even after Ehret lost to Baton Rouge-Scotlandville High inside the Cajundome during the semifinal round of the LHSAA Top 28 5A state championship tournament.

But as teammates-to-be got to know Payton before he initially enrolled at UL, playing pickup games and the like, some wondered.

"I was thinking, ‘I don’t know,’ " said power forward J.J. Thomas, UL’s top scorer least season.

"But when I came back at the beginning of the (school year), it was a whole new ‘E,’ " Thomas added. "He got real good."

Even as the Cajuns embarked on their 2011-12 season, though, there still was growing to do.

UL opened with a win over Northern Arizona followed by losses to North Dakota State and host San Francisco at the Hilltop Challenge in California, and Payton — playing behind returning starter Raymone Andrews at the point — looked to some a lot like the wide-eyed 17-year-old he was.

"You could tell he had a couple jitters," Thomas said.

In short time, though, the shaking stopped.

Cajuns coach Bob Marlin like what he saw so much that after returning from San Francisco he even started Payton for an eight-game span from mid-November through mid-December. Before anyone could blink, Payton was driving down the lane at Ole Miss on ESPN’s Top 10 Plays of the Day. He was driving for the game-winner in overtime at Western Kentucky. He was driving, and getting fouled, before hitting the winning free throw with 0.4 seconds to go in OT against Denver.

"Elfrid’s the best on our team at (driving to the basket), regardless of his age — and that’s why he’s out there," Marlin said.

"Now he’s more confident," Thomas added. "Just calmer out there. He’s comfortable. That’s the biggest thing."

There still are times, Payton said, when he is "learning more about the game, and trying to get wins on this level."

All in all, though, there is no more self-doubt as to whether or not he belongs.

Payton can’t pinpoint any particular game, or even any stretch in the season, when he was convinced of that.

Consider it more of a subtle progression.

"There were times in certain games," Payton said, "where I thought, ‘Well, it’s not too bad; nobody’s just overpowering me, making it look like I’m not supposed to be out there.’

"I still have a little more catching up to do, but I think I can handle myself."

***

When Payton has the ball in his hands late in a game, things don’t always go as well as they did against Western Kentucky and Denver.

On occasion — OK, one more baby joke — circumstances do rattle him.

As time is winding down with the score 58-58 at home against Arkansas State a couple weeks back, two nights after that OT loss to Arkansas-Little Rock, Payton shakes his defender with a quick crossover dribble and rises with a jumper for the win — only to come up quite short.

But he more than makes amends in overtime against the Red Wolves, first with a steal that leads to a Darshawn McClellan bucket early in overtime and later with a drive that produces a three-point play the old fashioned way.

That Payton hit the free throw that followed on that play, or that he converted a pair of freebies to give UL a 58-55 lead with 23.5 seconds remaining in regulation, came as no great surprise to those around him most, however.

"He puts in a lot of hard work, extra time in the gym shooting free throws all the time — before practice, after practice," Cajuns shooting guard Bryant Mbamalu said. "Even in-between practice sometimes, when Coach is talking, he’ll go shoot some free throws."

***

It’s just a few moments following that Feb. 9 loss to Arkansas-Little Rock, and Payton is a mess in the UL lockerroom.

He felt he failed to come through for the Cajuns, and he wasn’t going to let anyone convince him otherwise, no matter how hard they may have tried.

Worried afterward that detractors would try to break him, center Kadeem Coleby offered words of encouragement.

Others did too.

"I tell him, ‘Don’t worry about it,’" Coleby said. "’It’s going to happen a lot in life, so just move on from that’ — because he was really down."

But with the weight of responsibility simply too overwhelming, little seemed to work.

"He really cares about his teammates," Marlin said. "He cares about our team. He’s the kind of guy you want to coach."

***

Now shortly past midnight after a loss that could ultimately keep UL from winning the Sun Belt West, the one to UALR, Marlin is leaving his office at the Cajundome.

The ball is still bouncing.

Payton is standing at the free-throw line, putting up one shot after another, just as he has for at least the prior hour-and-a-half.

A team manager — still wearing his game-night tie — rebounds the makes, and the misses.

How long it went on, perhaps only two truly know.

And at 11:30 that morning, well before practice on the day between the two overtime games will begin, Payton is back at it, shooting more free throws.

He stays until around 6:30 p.m., doing more of the same, because, well, what else is a then-still-not-even 18-year-old college freshman to do?

"I was pretty down about the game," Payton said.

"But you can’t sit around," he added. "You’ve just got to get in the gym, and get better."

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