2nd-half run carries Robert Morris past Lindenwood for 3rd straight win

Two down, one to go for the Robert Morris men’s basketball team.

Josh Omojafo’s 17 points led four players in double figures as the Colonials ran past Lindenwood, 67-53, Friday night in the Urban-Bennett Invitational at UPMC Events Center, their second win in the three-day, round-robin tournament and third straight overall.

Ryan Prather Jr. added 11 points, Alvaro Folgueiras contributed 10 points and 14 rebounds and Amarion Dickerson also scored 10 points for Robert Morris (3-2), which shot 42.6% and held Lindenwood to just 27.6 in the second half and 35.2 overall.

“The defense led the way. We were flying around, defensively,” Robert Morris coach Andy Toole said. “Some of those guys are hard guys to guard. They just put so much pressure on you with their ability to shot-make and get into the paint, and we really stepped up.”

D.J. Smith, filling it at point guard for the injured Kam Woods (ankle sprain), finished with eight points, seven assists and four rebounds for the Colonials.

In the first game, Stonehill rebounded from its opening-night loss to RMU by racing past New Orleans, 80-54, behind Josh Morgan’s 20 points.

The tournament will pause for a day Saturday before concluding with a final doubleheader Sunday, when Robert Morris will face New Orleans (1-3) at 4 p.m. after Stonehill (2-3) and Lindenwood (1-3) battle at 1 p.m.

“The day off will help,” Toole said. “When we planned the tournament, part of the idea was to give everyone a day off because three days in a row is brutal.”

Robert Morris broke open a one-point game at halftime by outscoring Lindenwood, 38-25, in the second half. Omojafo, who averaged 20.0 points a year ago at Division II Gannon, shot 7 for 11 overall and 3 for 5 from behind the arc to spark the RMU offense.

The 6-foot-5 junior from Hamilton, Ontario, leads the Colonials with an average of 13.2 points per game.

RMU held a 41-32 rebounding advantage as Folgueiras reached double digits for the third straight game and fourth in the team’s five games so far.

“Alvaro has really good instincts for the game,” Toole said. “He’s a guy we need to be consistent every night. He showed flashes last year, and tonight he played a terrific game on the defensive end and a terrific offensive half in the second half. His ceiling is very high, and he’s got to keep working to reach it.”

Dickerson, who set a RMU single-game record for blocks with seven in a 63-51 victory against Stonehill, added three more against Lindenwood to give him 10 in the tournament and 14 for the year.

Toole praised his players for keeping their intensity at a high level on back-to-back nights.

“We had some guys that played hard for the entire 40 minutes,” he said. “In the second half, we did a really great job of moving the ball, being able to get some clean shots. We moved it in the first half, but we just didn’t make many shots.”

Markeith Browning II scored 11 points and Reggie Bass added 10 for Lindenwood, an Ohio Valley Conference member playing in just its third season in Division I.