Robert Morris men want to maximize special opportunity in NEC tourney
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Sure, there’ve been a number of key contributors to the Robert Morris’ surge into the Northeast Conference Tournament semifinals in men’s basketball, where Saturday the Colonials welcome Long Island University to UPMC Events Center.
At any moment for Robert Morris, the stars have turned out to be better known players such as the Williams brothers — guards Josh and Jon — or forward AJ Bramah, the jumping jack whose energy can be contagious.
Or they’ve been role players like the steady Dante Treacy at the point, the 6-foot-8 Yannis Mendy patrolling down low or Charles Bain, Sayveon McEwen or Jalen Hawkins, a trio of guys who have given the Colonials some great minutes from time to time.
For sure, many of them have been here before, as has Andy Toole, as a coach at Robert Morris and a player at Penn.
Top-seeded RMU (18-14) is making its fourth consecutive NEC semifinals appearance and 12th in the past 13 seasons. But it is the first at home since 2015.
“Every year is different,” Toole said. “I don’t think you look at it as a span of time. You just try to be in the moment as best you can and do the best you can for the guys on the court and the guys on the team. That’s the way we’ve always approached it. Take each opportunity and try to maximize it, and that’s no different than what we try to do yesterday, today and tomorrow.”
For Toole, a 1,000-point scorer in college who appeared in the NCAA Tournament in 2002 as a guard at Penn, RMU is attempting to earn an automatic bid to the NCAAs for just the second time in his 10-year run as the Colonials’ coach.
He also was on former RMU coach Mike Rice Jr.s’ staff as an assistant with the 2010 NCAA Tournament team.
No. 4 LIU (15-17) stands in the way of the final hurdle, the NEC championship game Tuesday night.
But while Toole insists it’s just another unique chance at something special, there’s something about being in this spot that tugs at you every time you get there. Just ask him.
Ask Bramah, who recently supplanted Bain in the RMU starting lineup, supposedly to give the Colonials a slightly different look after a long, grinding season produced a tournament No. 1 seed by default for Robert Morris because of first-place Merrimack’s ineligible status while serving a four-year transition period to Division I from Division II.
Or maybe better, ask the Williams brothers, a profound portion of the Colonials’ talented and deep backcourt. All of them made positive plays — and some boneheaded ones, too — in RMU’s 59-58 victory over St. Francis Brooklyn in the quarterfinals.
Josh Williams (13.4 ppg), barely the team’s leading scorer — Bramah is at 13.3 after notching a team-high 22 in the quarterfinals — is trying to shake the image of what could have been in Wednesday’s one-point victory at UPMC Events Center.
In the final 48 seconds, Josh Williams, a redshirt senior facing potentially his last college game each time out, missed 2 of 3 free throws, then watched St. Francis Brooklyn’s Larry Moreno miss a short jumper at the buzzer that would have sent the Colonials packing.
“I think about it,” Williams said. “I try not to harp about it too much because I do want to be in a positive mindstate. It’s really just about staying focused and locked in as much as I possibly can. I don’t want to think about it too much because then you rack up some nerves that you don’t want, some jitters that you don’t want. But I definitely think about it all the time. I text my teammates on a daily basis and let them know that it’s crunch time and that opportunities like this don’t come along all the time.”
Said Jon, the younger brother of Josh: “It’s March. You need games like that. You’re going to have games like that. We came out on the upper end of the stick. We’re moving forward now.”
The recipient of the NEC’s automatic NCAA Tournament bid will be decided Tuesday night at the site of the highest-seeded team involving the Robert Morris-LIU and St. Francis (Pa.)-Sacred Heart winners — the latter playing their semifinal Saturday in Loretto.
“There’s no really added pressure,” said Jon Williams, a junior who set a school record against St. Francis Brooklyn with his 100th consecutive start. “We’re just going to go out and try to have fun with it. We’re just trying to enjoy the moment because a lot of people don’t get this moment.”
Yet RMU is making its 17th consecutive appearance in the NEC Tournament, the longest active streak in the conference.