Lil' Romeo, Master P's son, hopes to play basketball for USC

LOS ANGELES -- Lil' Romeo says he's bound for Southern California, where if all goes according to plan, he could be Romeo Miller, Trojans basketball player.

The teenage hip-hop star, a high school junior, has committed to play basketball for the Trojans, Dave Lindsay, a spokesman for Lil' Romeo's online label, UrbanDigital Records, said Friday.

USC spokesman Dave Tuttle declined to confirm or deny the report, but said the university hasn't received a signed letter of intent from the rapper, who is just a high school junior.

"We can't comment on any recruits or potential recruits until we have a signed letter. That's an NCAA rule," Tuttle said.

Lil' Romeo, whose full name is Percy Romeo Miller, is currently a guard on his Beverly Hills High School team.

"Basketball has run in the family," Lindsay said, noting the rapper's father, hip-hop mogul Master P, had tryouts with two NBA teams in the 1990s.

"In the future, I want to be an NBA player. That's my goal," Lil' Romeo told the Associated Press in a 2003 interview.

At the time he was 14 and just 5-foot-6. He acknowledged then that his goal might go unrealized if he didn't add another 12 inches of height.

He's 17 now and 6-1, a little more than halfway toward that goal.