Familiar Territory: Romar and Dooley Return to Old DI Stomping Grounds

Lorenzo Romar and Joe Dooley, rehired by Pepperdine and East Carolina after stints with respective schools in the late 1990s, boast an opportunity to achieve something rare in the major-college coaching community. The Waves reeled Romar back in despite failure of a similar tactic earlier this decade when Tom Asbury won fewer than 30% of his games in three seasons after prevailing more than 2/3 of the time from 1988-89 through 1993-94. Asbury failed to come anywhere close to duplicating success of Ronnie Arrow (South Alabama) and Jim McCafferty (Loyola LA). Arrow and McCafferty are the only two of the previous 38 mentors in this "Comeback Club" category over the last 60-plus years to compile a higher winning percentage the second time around.

Lou Carnesecca (St. John's) and Lake Kelly (Austin Peay State) are the only coaches to win NCAA playoff games in two different stints with the same school. Romar and Dooley joined the following alphabetical list of coaches returning to their former major-college stomping grounds if their tenures weren't interrupted solely by World War II:

NOTES: VBK also had two stints at Hofstra, but Hofstra wasn't at the major-college level his first stint there. . . . OCU de-emphasized its program to the NAIA level after Lemons returned. . . . ORU wasn't always at the Division I level for either of Trickey's stints.