MOON TOWNSHIP – Robert Morris looked to bounce back after being handed their first loss of the season against Akron on Wednesday when they welcomed in Canisius (2-4) on Saturday to the UPMC Events Center and defeated the Golden Griffins by a final score of 62-52.

Fouls piled up quickly and they continued throughout the whole game.

“I think sometimes our legs got slow, we weren’t ready to slide and keep in front of the ball. They did a nice job of really attacking us when we got lazy in the ball.” head coach Charlie Buscaglia said.

With fouls being a big part of the game, another big contributor to it being a sloppy game was the fact that the Colonials had 22 turnovers as well. Coming off of a thanksgiving break for the team and a lack of concentration did not help the team out, so a combination of both had to do with a sloppy afternoon.

“I think you can probably put it all together and say there were moments where you probably point to one or the other. Coming back and plaything this game, we needed to have a better day of practice yesterday and that would’ve helped us a lot in the game we played today.” Buscaglia said.

Danielle Vuletich was the leading scorer of today’s matchup with 14 points as she worked well down in the paint. She was able to take advantage of Canisius’s post players to be able to get to the basket even though they only had one practice.

“Working in practice, we only had one day to prepare for Canisius. So, scouting them, we knew that their post players wall very thin, so using that to our ability to go up and under and to easily move around them help us.” Vuletich said.

Vuletitch has been very consistent this season when it comes to scoring averaging 9.4 a game. She maintained this scoring prowess even while coming off the bench. She attributes being better this year because she was able to learn and observe last year.

“I had a whole year last year to develop, and I was very happy about that because last year I had a lot of girls pushing me to be my best and I learned from them too. So last year really played a part in my performance this year.” Vuletich said.

A mixture of the fouls and the turnovers really made the game tighter than it needed to be late on but through determination, they were able to close out the game and that will give them confidence moving on throughout the season.

This game just proves that these players have a hunger to be better and they always look to be better than they were in their last game and that is due to their hunger and the drive to improve constantly. They look to use this hunger and drive to try and get two wins on the road in conference play.

“We always talk about being hungry and being constantly hungry and how we have to have that fire inside of us,” Vuletich said. “Now we know going into conference play especially being on the road, even though we are on the road, we just have to play our game and be successful in what we do. Focus on our principles, and just go out and play like we know how to play.”

RMU will look to use this game as a learning curve and show how they can be better with a stretch of tough games coming up.

The Colonials will now have a tough road trip to open up conference play as on Friday, they will battle with Wright State on Dec. 2 in their first Horizon League matchup of the season.