After Robert Morris moved to the Horizon League in July of this year, many wondered when the next time the team would face a former conference foe.

It didn’t take long as the Colonials will be squaring off against former NEC opponent Saint Francis University on December 5 in Loretto.

Red Flash Head Coach Rob Krimmel said in a press conference on Thursday that the series between these former conference opponents will continue.

“Certainly there’s a connection with Mike Iuzzolino, one of the all-time greats here at Saint Francis,” Krimmel said. “To me, it makes sense to keep playing it.”

Krimmel also discussed the benefit of the colleges being about 95 miles apart has for the matchup between the two schools.

“We’re so close to each other, it makes sense,” Krimmel said. “It’s so hard to schedule games, to be able to have an opponent an hour and a half down the road that was in our league for so long, it was a natural geographical rival and some of the games that we’ve had the last five or six years. It makes sense.”

Over the years these two teams have faced off in many marquee matchups, which include games that determined the top seed in the Northeast Conference and also deciding the conference champion.

The Colonials and Red Flash have faced off a total of 89 times in their season series. Robert Morris has taken 51 of those matchups, losing 38 of them. As of late, the Red Flash have dominated the series as they have won nine of the last 11 games with their two losses coming in the final regular-season game last year, which gave the Colonials the first seed and home-court advantage in the playoffs, and the 2020 Northeast Conference Championship.

It will be interesting to see how this series plays out with Robert Morris in the Horizon League and Saint Francis still in the NEC.

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