Lafayette thrashes RMU in season opener
November 15, 2014
In his five years at the helm of the Robert Morris men’s basketball program, Andy Toole is undefeated when opening a season inside the friendly confines of the Charles L. Sewall Center.
Until now.
Toole was unable to go 4-0 when beginning a campaign in Moon Township, falling to Lafayette, 77-50, in RMU’s worst loss on campus in 18 years.
“So obviously not the way we wanted to start our season. Clearly. But we talked in the locker-room as a team afterwards and there’s a clearly lot of things that we need to clean up and get better at,” Toole said. “I think we allowed our offense to affect our defensive effort many times.”
The Leopards began the scoring 1:17 in courtesy of Dan Trist’s layup, but despite the fact that RMU missed its first three shots, the Colonials only trailed by two at the 17:22 mark.
However it took six minutes until Robert Morris sunk another field goal, going 0-6 from the floor during that span.
And by that time, it was too late.
Lafayette utilized an 18-3 run to close out the first half, holding a 20 point advantage heading into the final 20 minutes of play.
Though they tallied 34 points in the second half, the Colonials were unable to tighten the gap, shooting a dismal 25.9 percent from the field.
“… On this team, you have to understand that we have a lot of young guys so they don’t know how to pick up on things like that because going from high school to college, everyone always said this and that and made them feel so special, but here, it’s hard to win games.,” said senior Lucky Jones, who netted 10 points. “It’s hard to win college basketball games and if everyone’s not bought in, we’re not going to be successful how we’ve been in past years.”
Robert Morris begins a five game road swing as part of the mainland portion of the Battle 4 Atlantis Tournament by taking on ACC power North Carolina Sunday night at 6:00 p.m. in a nationally televised contest.
