Gym Rats White, Romeo: Friends and Occasional Foes

White's 35 Power Husker Win Over Penn State

Romeo's 25 Fuel Nebraska’s Upset of Spartans

Randy York N-Sider

Official Blog of the Huskers

Last weekend, two hot-shooting Nebraska scorers led their respective Husker teams to Big Ten Conference wins in Lincoln. On Saturday, Andrew White lll, a junior from Richmond, Va., equaled Pinnacle Bank Arena’s scoring record with a 35-point performance that included a career-high 6 three-pointers in a 70-54 men's basketball win over Penn State.

On Sunday, Natalie Romeo, a sophomore from Martinez, Calif., hit 5-of-7 three-pointers to become Nebraska's single-season three-point record holder with 86 in the Husker women’s 73-66 win over No. 17 Michigan State. Interestingly, White was sitting behind the Husker women’s team and between two of Nebraska’s most recognized sports figures – Director of Athletics Shawn Eichorst and Head Football Coach Mike Riley.

Curiosity got the best of me when I saw Saturday night’s Husker hero carefully watching Sunday’s hard-fought women’s win over the Spartans, and sure enough, there’s an intriguing storyline to Husker sharpshooters from the East Coast and the West Coast rooting for each other whenever one’s on the playing floor and the other is in the stands.

Get ready for a surprise that’s wrapped in coincidence and reads like another classic example of why there really is NO PLACE like Nebraska. White and Romeo not only are friends, but occasional foes, and you have to listen to White to understand how two driven student-athletes met and became mutually competitive admirers based on something they uniquely share – being proud, certified gym rats. Nebraska men's coach Tim Miles provides the evidence for White, the oldest of these two well documented gym rats, who just happen to play at PBA.

White’s Form Picture Perfect; Husker Fans Expect Romeo’s Ball to Go In

“Andrew is one of the elite shooters in the country and Kansas recruited him that way,” Miles told me. “When Andrew decided to transfer, we were fortunate he came here. I’ve rarely seen a player that when the ball comes off with the flick of a wrist like it does, it’s just a thing of beauty. The pictures they take show a perfect shot. They show the ball right above his right eye. They show the poised look on his face – eyes up to the target – and then a great release. When you see it, it really is picture perfect.”

The same can be said about Romeo. “I’m impressed with the way she can get open, get her feet set and then every time she shoots it, I’m thinking the same thing I think when I see Andrew shoot – the ball’s going in!” Miles said. “Andrew has such an effortless shot, and Natalie has a rhythm shot. When hers comes off nice, you just think it’s going in for sure. It just rips the net. The way that her ball curls in the net is fun to watch. It gets in that net and kind stays in it a little longer than other shooters. It’s just a cool shot to watch.”

Now that we all understand the respect that Miles has for both incredibly gifted shooters, it’s time to introduce the chapters within the story that reflects Romeo’s intensely competitive nature, White’s soft spot for others who see basketball woven into the very fabric of everyday life and a double-dog dare between two talented team leaders.

“I think Natalie has a really good knack for the game,” White told me. “We met last year around summertime. We were just kind of on high-five terms. We ran into each other a couple of nights coming out of the Hendricks Training Complex, and one day she just came up to me and asked if I could help her out with her game. I’m thinking to myself ‘Wow, I haven’t even played yet’, so I did a little research on Natalie and found out that she was little, but a good jump-shooter. Obviously, I could relate to that.

“From that moment, I’ve always followed Natalie and tried to see her play whenever possible,” White said. “I’ve been a fan of hers since I got here and I always try to support the women’s team in general because teams at Nebraska support each other. I’m glad I checked them out early on because when you get on a platform here and see others support you, you want to do the same for them. I’ve always had a special eye on Natalie because we’ve drawn a lot of comparisons with the way we’ve helped our teams' cause hitting threes this season.”

The Epitome of Romeo's Competitive Nature – The Desire to Play One-on-One

Imagine, if you will, a Twilight Zone-kind of moment, watching two sharpshooters representing the same school compete against each other. Even though White won the vast majority of their spirited competitions, he will never forget when Romeo (No. 5 pictured above) came up to him one day and insisted that they play against each other, 1-on-1 or 2-on-2. “I shook my head,” he remembers. “I’m this big (6-foot-7) guy and she’s 5-foot-7. I told her I’m not going play either one because it’s a lose/lose situation any way you look at it.”

Romeo, however, is such a competitor that “she was on my back every minute, insisting on playing one-on-one, so I got out there and was fooling around, and she got mad at me for not taking her seriously,” he recalled. “She wanted to go full-bore, so I said ‘okay’. I turned it up a little bit and obviously, size was a huge advantage. It wasn’t a bad competition. She’d grab a rebound and run straight to the 3-point line and pop it in before I could even get to her.”

The fiction in White’s mind became fact. “Natalie has such an unreal gift to stop and step on a dime,” White said. “When I saw her hit that transition three-pointer in the game Sunday against Michigan State, I had a flashback to what she did to me in our little one-on-one competition. All of this just shows what kind of competitor she is. She won’t back down from anyone. For her, a small guard, to come straight at me, a big forward...I just don’t know how to describe it. I mean, she came straight at me. I couldn’t believe it then and still can hardly believe it now.”

Romeo can believe it. “I went to the men’s game with a teammate Saturday,” Romeo said. “It was fun watching Andrew killing it. He hit everything. It was just amazing. When you think about it, it’s all about getting in the gym and working as hard as you can when you’re there. I remember the competitions we had against each other. Even in those practice sessions, you’re striving to take game-like shots. You have to work constantly.”

That decision relates back to her freshman year at Nebraska. “I decided to learn how to shoot because I wanted to find a way to help the team,” Romeo said. “I found myself going to the gym almost every day to get better. I just kind of fell in love with that kind of feeling. Shooting basketballs non-stop settles me down. It doesn’t wear me down. It builds me up because you can tell you’re getting better when you take the time.”

Connie Yori: Romeo Changed Her Own Paradigm and Wore Out Her N-Card  

Romeo “has put the time in the gym outside of our practice time to become the shooter that she is,” Nebraska Women’s Head Basketball Coach Connie Yori (pictured above) told me.“When I watched her in high school, she was not somebody who relied a lot on shooting threes. In fact, she was almost all drive. She drove the ball a lot. She knew when she got here she couldn’t drive into the land of the giants time and time again and be successful, so she was smart enough to figure that out and really worked on her shooting, which set up her drives, and that’s kind of what happened against Michigan State. They were so worried about Natalie shooting the three that she was able to get to the basket.

“When Natalie came here, she was a drive-first and shoot-second player. Now, she’s a shoot-first, drive-second player,” Yori said. “The reason she’s become such a good shooter is the extra time she’s put in on her own to improve her shooting. The Hendricks Training Complex has a key-lock system where you have to use an N-card to get in and Natalie’s card is pretty much worn out because she goes into the Hendricks complex on her own for hours and hours and hours every week. Sometimes, she gets someone to rebound for her. We also have what we call a gun where a machine keeps getting the ball back to her, and she just wears that thing out, too.”

There are good reasons why White has become such a motivating role model for Romeo. They can relate to each other. “I guess we’re both just gym rats,” White said. “We like to play all the time and compete as much as possible. We love a challenge and both know that when you’re a shooter, that’s not something that stays with you. You have to sharpen that skill day-by-day. If I were to take a week off, you can tell. That’s just something that I’ve always embraced.

“Shooting is the bread-and-butter of my game. That’s why I have to make sure it’s going all day, every day,” White said. “I don’t have set counts. At one point, I did count shots. Then my dad told me the key is not just working hard; it’s working smart. So that’s why some weeks in the summer, I do a thousand shots a day. That’s shots made, not shots attempted. During this part of the season, it might be 400 or 500 shots (made, not attempted). My goal every day is to shoot 80 percent. Supposedly, that’s what you need to shoot without defenders so you can shoot 50 percent when you do face a defense in an actual game.

“Some days, I shoot 50 shots and make 45 or 46 of them. Then I’ll walk out because my goal isn’t to attempt a certain number of shots each week; it’s to keep my jump shot to be where I want it to be for the game. Having leg strength and durability is more important than trying to keep building on certain numbers. At this point of the year, I’m just trying to maintain health and stamina, so I’ve been off the court a lot more this time of year than I’ve been on the court during the past just because I had to understand that being in the gym the longest this time of year doesn’t necessarily make you the best you can be for the stamina you need for the next game.”

White lll Earns Rare Place in Competitive Big Ten Company Over Two Decades 

The lengths that White and Romeo are willing to endure and the hurdles they are determined to clear reflect the very nature of their basketball careers. White has made 69 three-pointers and needs just one more to become the seventh Husker in history to reach that total in a single season. He is indeed in rare B1G company because he’s one of only 10 players in the country averaging at least 15 points per game while shooting 50 percent from the field, 40 percent from 3-point range and 75 percent from the foul line this season. Even more impressively, only four Big Ten players have finished the season with those marks over the last 20 seasons – two from Ohio State and one each from Wisconsin, Michigan State, and now, hopefully, Nebraska.

Romeo is reaching similar heights and accuracy. Her 86 threes this season broke the 85 single-season school record previously shared by Kiera Hardy in 2004-05 and Amy Stephens in 1988-89. Romeo also has 137 threes in her first two seasons combined – the best in school history, breaking the previous record of 134 by Jordan Hooper, who made 67 in 2010-11 and 67 more in 2011-12. Hooper’s school record for career threes is 295. Romeo is making 43 percent of her three-point shooting attempts and is positioned to become the all-time leader, if she continues her pace and avoids injury.

Miles (pictured above with White in the background last Saturday) understands the anomalies of greatness. “Andrew White is as big of a gym rat as there is in the whole world,” Miles said. “The only way to be a great shooter is to get here early and stay late or come in on the off days because shooting isn’t like riding a bike. It’s an art and a sophisticated one. You have to be able to have enough repetition and enough muscle memory and then you have to put it into game form, which deals with quickness, balance, fatigue...you name it.

“Whether you’re feeling good or ill, shooting threes are hard to do,” Miles said. “You can only do it if you push yourself in the gym, mostly on your own. You can do it sometimes with your team but there’s no way you can get enough rest from fatigue. That’s what these two young people do – Andrew White lll and Natalie Romeo work their butts off on their own, and they’re the only ones who really know what kind of a difference it makes.”  

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