romar out

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SoCalHoops College Basketball

Romar Says "Meet Me In St. Louis"; Pepperdine
Successor Up In The Air--(March 26, 1999)

Lorenzo Romar told everyone that in order to get him to leave Pepperdine's Malibu campus, it would take the "perfect job." Well, evidently somebody found the perfect job, and Romar will be gone. And to St. Louis of all places to coach a team with one of the weirdest nicknames in all of college ball. What is a "Billiken" anyway?

Actually, it's not surprising Romar is leaving. His star recruit, Jelani Gardner is gone, and he's got no huge recruits on the horizon. Some very good ones, but none as huge as Gardner was for Pepperdine. His salary is jumping from $125,000 to $400,000. He'll go from playing in a moderately attended Firestone Fieldhouse where Pepperdine averaged something like about 2,000 on a good day, to the 21,000-seat Kiel Center, where the Billikens are probably one of the top draws in the nation, ranking sixth in attendance in 1997-98 at 17,708 fans average per game since the center opened. They drew more than 14,000 per game this season alone.

This is not a surprising move at all. Romar was on the way up at Pepperdine too, even if the team just missed making the tournament this year. Romar took a team which had gone 10-18 before he arrived and which finished in last place in the WCC, and turned them into a 19-13, second-place team in three seasons. Not bad.

Romar will succeed Charlie Spoonhour at St. Louis, who actually retired earlier in March after seven seasons. Romar made the connection to St. Louis through St. Louis Athletic Director Doug Woolard, when both were at UCLA. In Romar's final season at UCLA, 1995-96, Woolard's son, Chris, was also a graduate assistant for the Bruins.

Now the big question is who will take over at Pepperdine. . . .