Romero has Lancers plugged in
Brookfield Central star elevates teammates
The moment said a lot about CJ Romero, her teammates, too.
Brookfield Central was closing out a win over Germantown, the area’s No. 1-ranked team at the time, when Romero, the team’s senior point guard, drove to the basket, drew a foul and went flying. She had
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Romero’s four teammates simultaneously rushed to help up a teammate who has provided lifts all season.
In just a few seconds we witnessed the chemistry that has led to one of the area’s biggest success stories and received a taste of the hard-charging style of the player who has fueled it.
In case you’ve missed it, Romero has been something special.
“With how she plays and the level she plays at, it raises everyone else’s level,” Central coach Mallory Liebl
said. “She's got the ability to push her teammates and with how she plays, kids look up to her and follow her because she always has this confidence about her.”
Confident. Tough. Aggressive. Unselfish.
The Lancers' floor general checks all those boxes. Her improvement across the board has helped the Lancers (19-2 overall, 13-1 Greater Metro) win 11 straight games, climb to the top spot of the Journal Sentinel area rankings and reach the cusp of their first Greater Metro Conference title since 2008-09.
Romero has still been one of the area's biggest breakout performers of 2020-21. That is saying a lot considering she was a first-team all-Greater Metro player last season.
At this point she's a lock for all-state distinction.
“I think I play with all heart and I think that really drives me,” she said. “It's not hard for me to find motivation to play. I just love the game of basketball and I think that really drives me as a player.”
Brookfield Central's CJ Romero is averaging 19.9 points a game this season, almost a 10-point improvement from last year.
Improvement across the board
Pick the statistic and Romero has shown significant improvement. In 19 games she was averaging 19.1 points compared to 9.4 last season. Her assists are up from 5.4 per game last season to 6.8. So are her steals, going from 2.4 per game to 3.7. She is also shooting better, raising her percentage from 41.5% as a junior to 53.7% overall. From threepoint range, her shooting has gone from 35.6% last season to 44.2% this year.
The only thing that has taken a dip is her rebounding, though it could be said that someone who stands 5-foot-3 overachieved in averaging 6.2 boards last season. Romero is averaging 4.9.
Of all those numbers, Romero's emergence as a scorer is perhaps the most surprising. She was always a passfirst point guard, but after 2020 Greater Metro Conference player of the year Anna Mortag – now a freshman at IUPUI – graduated, Romero knew she had to change her mindset.
“I think my mentality coming in this year was that we need to make up for the 17-20 points that Anna provided,” she said. “Coming into this year I was going to look to attack first because I realized over the years that once you attack and look to score, the better it is for your teammates, which makes the game so much easier.”
That theory has proved true. Romero's career scoring high was 19 points entering the season. Through Thursday, she had eclipsed that nine times. Twice she reached 30 points, topping out with a career-high 36 points against Sussex Hamilton on 16-for-20 shooting on Dec. 22.
Meanwhile, the pressure she puts on the defense has opened the door for her teammates, many of whom have also made significant improvement since last season.
Junior forward Ellie Coraggio has gone from nine points last season to 13.5 this year. Alina Prusko, a junior guard, has jumped from 4.9 to 9.1 points. Senior forward Lauren Rusch has lifted her average from 2.4 to 7.8.
“When you have a point guard like CJ it helps a lot, but we have kids who have completely bought into what we're doing and they're team-first kids,” Liebl said.
A resume few can match
That balance has helped Central put together an impressive list of wins. Among the Lancers' list of victims is
North Shore leader Slinger, Pewaukee, the second-place team from the Woodland West, and Waukesha West, which is one of the area's hottest teams with a nine-game winning streak.
There was also, of course, Germantown, which Central beat, 63-52, on Jan. 12 to move into a share of first in the GMC. Romero considers her 23-point, eight-rebound, four-assist effort that night one of her best games of the season.
All that stands between the Lancers and a share of the GMC title is Wauwatosa East (2-11 GMC) on Tuesday and Brookfield East (10-4) on Friday.
For Romero, it would be another highlight in a season. In the fall, she was a member of Central's state championship golf team, earning third-team allstate distinction from the Golf Coaches Association of Wisconsin. She is also a standout softball player who received all-conference honorable mention as a sophomore outfielder.
Basketball, with its non-stop action, has always been her No. 1.
“Golf is a really hard sport mentally, but it's a grind of four hours or more every time you play,” she said. “In softball sometimes you're taking breaks when you're in the outfield or waiting to go to bat. With basketball it's always high impact, always on the go, not a lot of time to take breaks or relax.”
Romero will take her talents to Division II Northern Michigan next year. She'll leave Central as the school's alltime assist leader as well as a member of the school's scoring top 10.
With the conference season still to wrap up and the postseason to be play, Romero's story isn't done, but it's coming together nicely.
“She just epitomizes what toughness is,” Liebl said. “You're not going to get that kid to come out of the game for anything. She got banged up against DSHA (Tuesday) and just kept battling. She would do anything. She would run through a wall for her teammates if she needed to.”