RMU hopes to benefit from a reprieve
Colonials know they must learn from mistakes
Robert Morris saw its proverbial life flash before its eyes Wednesday night.
In the quarterfinals of the Northeast Conference tournament against St. Francis Brooklyn, the Colonials watched a double-digit lead evaporate. The Terriers had a shot from the paint that would have won them the game.
Luckily for Robert Morris, the shot didn’t go in, and the top-seeded Colonials’ season is still alive, with their next game coming Saturday in Moon in the tournament semifinals against No. 4 seed LIU Brooklyn.
“When you’re the team with the one more point, it can be a good coaching opportunity,” Robert Morris coach Andy Toole said Friday. “But it’s certainly an opportunity to remind guys of how important each and every possession is. We talked a little bit yesterday as we got together to prepare, saying, we went up 14 in the first half and then they scored 10 points in a three-minute stretch. That might have been just as important as those last couple possessions of the game.
“... I always laugh and say to guys, ‘Sometimes, you come to practice to beat the worst team on our schedule.’ Coaches come to practice to prepare you for games like that. How do you need to guard when it’s 59-58 and there’s under 10 seconds to go, and what urgency do you need to have? How well do you have to be trained? How well do you have to react in order to make the right plays?”
For fifth-year senior guard Josh Williams, Wednesday’s experience was especially harrowing.
Williams remembers his freshman year, when he was still at Akron before transferring to Robert Morris. The Zips lost on a buzzer beater in the Mid-American Conference championship that season, losing their chance at the NCAA tournament in the process.
On Wednesday, it almost happened to the Colonials. Even more pertinent for Williams, he missed two big free throws late against St. Francis Brooklyn, leaving the door open for the Terriers to potentially rip the game away from Robert Morris.
Immediately after his postgame responsibilities were taken care of, Williams stayed in the gym at UPMC Events Center and shot free throws for a long time. He says he’s made about 400 free throws since Wednesday, trying to make sure that if that moment comes up again for him, he’s ready.
“That [buzzer beater with Akron] sticks with me,” Williams said Friday. “To almost see that happen again in the last game, it was another eye-opener and hopefully an eye-opener to [teammates]. You could feel the atmosphere in the locker room, like we almost let one go, so it was definitely a motivator.”
As for Saturday’s game, the Colonials beat LIU Brooklyn earlier this season in the teams’ lone meeting, 71-66. But the Sharks have their own newlease-on-life feeling after their quarterfinal matchup on Wednesday, beating Fairleigh Dickinson with a buzzer-beating shot of their own.
Toole has done his best to shape his team’s focus on the game at hand, and perhaps Robert Morris’ near-loss helps him drive that message home.
He told a story Friday about Milan Brown, a current assistant at Pitt who formerly coached at Mount St. Mary’s in the NEC. Before a matchup between the Colonials and Mountaineers, Brown walked into the gym next to Toole and said ‘March don’t give an F.’
To Toole, that means Robert Morris needs to take the lessons from Wednesday, reset and get ready for the Sharks’ best shot Saturday.
“There were certainly a lot of lessons to learn from that game [on Wednesday],” Toole said. “And thankfully, we have another opportunity to go out and try and apply those lessons.”