RMU hangs on
Colonials star starts slow, closes strong for victory
Robert Morris pulls out a 6259 victory against Mount St. Mary’s.
Josh Williams is used to scoring whenever he wants, he said Saturday after Robert Morris’ 62-59 win against Mount St. Mary’s.
But Williams, a senior guard who entered Saturday averaging a team-high 15.6 points, shot poorly until the Colonials blew a 14-point lead and the game came down to the wire in the final minute.
After shooting 3 for 14, Williams drove for a layup and hit two free throws in the final 15 seconds to seal the Colonials’ second Northeastern Conference win, their third win in a row.
“It’s tough,” Williams said. “... But when you’ve got good guys like [freshman guard Cameron Wilbon] coming in and giving you a lift, and then you’ve got coaches and teammates telling you to keep working hard, keep attacking, keep being aggressive, ‘You worked so hard for this,’ it just sticks with me mentally,” Williams said. “If they’re going to have faith in me, then I should have faith in myself.”
Robert Morris (7-8, 2-0) led by 14 points before Mount St. Mary’s forward Omar Habwe hit a late 3-pointer to make it 30-19 at half. The Mountaineers (3-12, 0-2), however, shot far better in the second half (53.8 percent) than in the first (32 percent) to threaten the Colonials, who shot 40 percent overall.
Mount St. Mary’s shot 5 of 7 to open up the second half and cut Robert Morris’ lead to 36-31 with 15:25 remaining. A jumper and 3-pointer by guard Vado Morse, who led all scorers with 19 points, later brought the Mountaineers within four points.
“We are extremely fortunate to have gotten out of there with a win,” Robert Morris coach Andy Toole said. “Credit The Mount and their second-half performance, they certainly dictated the entire tempo of the second half on both ends of the floor. I didn’t think we did a good job of continuing to maintain our effort, starting probably the last couple minutes of that first half, and the obviously all the way through the second half, where they just really attacked us.”
Two free throws by Mount St. Mary’s forward Collin Nnamene tied the score at 4545 at 8:18 and Robert Morris gave up the lead, 51-50, when a pass by Williams was intercepted by Nnamene, who finished with a layup.
With two minutes left, two free throws by senior forward Malik Petteway, who had 11 points and 10 rebounds, tied it at 58-58. He missed two free throws and Morse made one to give Mount St. Mary’s a singlepoint lead with less than a minute to go. Cameron Wilbon missed two free throws with 45 seconds to play (Robert Morris shot 9 of 17 from the free-throw line).
That’s when Williams did his thing.
His layup gave the Colonials another lead with 13.4 seconds left and Wilbon, who had 10 points and seven rebounds, pulled down a defensive board on the Mountaineers’ next possession. Williams was fouled and made two more free throws, giving Robert Morris a 62-59 lead with 1.3 seconds left.
“We knew they were a team that came back from deficits, we knew they were going to fight,” Williams said. “When they took the lead, it was just stick to what we do, stick to what we know. Obviously, we struggled with that when they went on their run to take the lead. But once they took it, we kind of gathered ourselves and tried to calm each other down and just do what we do.”
Mount St. Mary’s, which started five underclassmen, couldn’t get a 3-pointer off before the buzzer.
In total, four Colonials finished with double-digit points, with senior guard Matty McConnell adding 11 points. Robert Morris continues NEC play at 9 p.m. Thursday at St. Francis Brooklyn.