NEW HORIZON FOR RMU
Robert Morris officials announced Monday that 10 of its 15 varsity athletic programs will join the Horizon League, beginning July 1, including men’s and women’s basketball.
“This, ladies and gentlemen, is the next great step forward for our student athletes and a special day in the history of our university,” Robert Morris president Dr. Chris Howard said in a prepared statement Monday. “We are excited for the excellent competition that awaits in the Horizon League and for the opportunities it presents us.”
For the basketball teams, the move will ensure an uptick in competition. The Colonials won the Northeast Conference tournament in both men’s and women’s basketball this past season.
For the women, it was their second conference tournament title in a row and fourth in the past seven years.
While that doesn’t necessarily mean the two teams were steamrolling through their old conference, it did make them an attractive option for the Horizon League, along with the UPMC Events Center, a 4,000-seat arena that
opened last year.
“As we went through this process, the question I got most often was: Why Robert Morris?” Horizon League commissioner Jonathan LeCrone said. “It’s a pretty simple answer. It’s about fit. It’s about alignment. It’s about who we are. It’s about who we want to be. It’s about who we want to be with. It’s about our core values and our mission and our vision.”
RMU athletic director Chris King mentioned more natural, geographical rivalries, the opportunity to play in some of the largest media markets in the country and the chance to compete in a higher-level basketball conference as reasons for the move. Other Horizon League schools include Youngstown State, Cleveland State and Detroit Mercy.
The Horizon League was the 20th best conference in Division I basketball last year, according to KenPom.com. The Northeast Conference was 29th. Additionally, the average seed for NCAA tournament qualifiers from the Horizon League was 14, as opposed to 16th in the NEC.
“Obviously, there’s going to be challenges, new teams, new level of competition,” men’s basketball coach Andy Toole said. “I think when you look at any conference that you’re a part of, all conference games are hard. It doesn’t matter records or any of that kind of stuff, they’re always going to be battles, and so we know the Horizon League will be exactly the same.
“We’ve played Youngstown State, Oakland, Cleveland State, UIC. We’ve played many of those teams for a number of years. We’re looking forward to competing against those teams and those coaches, who do a really good job with their programs and their teams. We just want to be able to come into the league and compete as well as we possibly can.”
The Horizon League does not have football, so the Colonials’ football program will move to the Big South Conference beginning in 2021. In 2020, it will play as an independent, as the NEC mandates that outgoing teams cannot participate in conference play.
“This is an excellent opportunity for Robert Morris University, and joining the Big South will allow [football coach Bernard Clark], staff and our student athletes, as well as the coaches, to take the program to even greater heights,” Howard said.
Most of the teams in the Big South are in Virginia and the Carolinas, with the only northern team being Monmouth in New Jersey.
Like the move to the Horizon League, this is a step up in competition. The Big South qualified two teams for the Football Championship Subdivison playoffs in two of the past three seasons, while the NEC only qualified one.
While one might think the distance between the Colonials and their new conference opponents would be a difficult hurdle to overcome, King pointed out that in the old conference, they had to charter flights to Connecticut and Staten Island, which are no closer than the Big South locations.
Robert Morris officials and Big South commissioner Kyle Kallander expressed support for continuing to play the Colonials’ primary football rival, Duquesne.
Additionally, King announced that Robert Morris had signed agreements to play four Football Bowl Subdivison teams. That includes a game against Central Michigan in 2021, Miami (Ohio) in 2022, Air Force in 2023 and West Virginia in 2025.
“I think the thing that’s going to help us as we grow in the league and as we grow in the conference, I think that’s going to help us get more recognition,” Clark, a graduate of Miami (Fla.), said.
“Miami could be down the road, you never know. I’m not looking forward to playing an Air Force or a Miami or a West Virginia, but it’s a great situation. What it does for our guys, it puts our guys in the right mindset to understand, ‘This is how much we have to grow in order to be at this level and play at this level.’
“Our guys understand that. That’s the good thing about what’s going on with our players.”
The Horizon League does not have men’s and women’s lacrosse leagues, so those teams are without a conference for the time being. King said he hopes to have that decided by the end of the summer.
Nonetheless, Monday was a momentous day for the Colonials across the board. They got their facilities last year, they got their high-profile successes on the court in the spring, and now they get a chance to move into new conferences and show what they can do against stronger competition.