Robert Morris looks to follow path of fellow mid-major Duquesne to NCAA Tournament

Remember last season? Who could forget when Duquesne won the Atlantic 10 Tournament in men’s basketball and surged to its first NCAA Tournament in something like a million years?

Remember that?

It had been 47 seasons — the year was 1977, to be exact — since the Dukes made The Big Dance.

What a story in Pittsburgh college basketball history when No. 11 seed Duquesne upset No. 6 BYU in the first round.

That truly was an exhilarating moment.

Don’t look now, but a similar mid-major scenario at Robert Morris is unfolding. The Colonials, winners of 11 of their past 14 games, are playing like a team on a mission.

Much like that Duquesne team of last season.

And that mission is to win the Horizon League Tournament and snatch up a coveted spot in the NCAA’s 68-team field.

Much like that Duquesne team did in the A-10 last season.

“That’s the plan,” Robert Morris sophomore Alvaro Folgueiras said.

With six regular-season games left, beginning Saturday at Northern Kentucky, the Colonials (17-8, 9-5) surely hope to execute their plan with the sort of precision needed at this critical time of the season.

“I don’t just do this for myself,” said Folgueiras’ teammate, Amarion Dickerson, whose school-record eight blocks during Wednesday night’s 71-56 victory against Detroit Mercy at UPMC Events Center moved the 6-foot-7 junior into second place in Division I with 67.

The NCAA leader was fellow Horizon Leaguer Gabe Dynes of Youngstown State with 73.

“I do this for my team, for the coaching staff, the fans, the community,” said Dickerson, a Cleveland native and junior college transfer from Mineral Area (Mo.). “I’ve got a lot I’m playing for, trying to get to March Madness.”

Robert Morris coach Andy Toole, whose 2020 team won the Northeast Conference Tournament championship in its final season in the league, only to sit out the postseason because of covid-19, just might have assembled his finest unit in 15 seasons on the Colonials bench.

“There is a great level of pride. They want to win games,” Toole said. “They are engaged. The times when we had to have difficult conversations, there is more acceptance of that. There is more player-to-player communication.”

Incidentally, speaking of Duquesne, former Dukes assistant Kim Lewis, who coached during the Ron Everhart years on The Bluff, joined Toole’s coaching staff for this season, too.

While Robert Morris appears to be trending toward this year’s version of Duquesne a year ago, the Dukes have stumbled under first-year coach Dru Joyce III, whose team is finding it difficult to build on last season’s ultra-successful 25-12 campaign in former coach Keith Dambrot’s final season.

After losing stars Dae Dae Grant, Jimmy Clark III and Fousseyni Drame, Duquesne added seven transfers to mesh with the team’s returning players, but the results have been less than appealing.

The Dukes (9-14, 4-6) returned home Wednesday night from a 73-68 defeat at Richmond — their fifth consecutive loss — and will try to avoid matching their longest skid of the season with a victory Saturday night against Loyola Chicago at UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse.

“It’s life,” Joyce said. “Everything is not going to go exactly as planned. You’ve got to regroup and move on.”