USD Magazine, Spring 1999

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LEVELi NC THE PLAYING FIELD

B Y J OHN TITCHEN

0

n his first visit to the University of San Diego campus in December 1996, Tom Lippold was mesmerized. Wide-eyed, the high school basketball star followed his guide across the manicured, flower-studded grounds, through the graceful arches of Serra Hall and into the bustling Hahn University Center. The 6-foot-6-inch "all-everything" at Orange County's Mater Dei High virtually had his pick of schools in the West Coast Conference. Loyola Marymount, Portland, Santa Clara, and Pepperdine had come calling. But Lippold says he fell in love with USD on that first campus tour. Until he saw the gym. "I couldn't believe it," Lippold says. "I had heard it was bad, but as I was looking at it, I thought, 'My high school gym is better than this.' " Opened 38 years ago, the gym - the USD Sports Center - seats just 1,500 on bleachers. The ceiling is too low for volleyball and it is unaccomodating for television cameras. Unventilated, small and cramped, its locker rooms are too small, too few and poorly plumbed. Lippold spent that day listening to basketball coach Brad Holland talk about the athletic department's unrealized plans for an on-campus arena. It is the same thing Holland has been telling recruits for a couple of years. And it's no coincidence the Sports Center is the last place Holland takes athletes he is wooing.

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