It might be spring break at Robert Morris University, but that hasn’t cooled the anticipation for tonight’s Northeast Confernce Championship game in Brookville, NY. The Colonials will take on Long Island University at 7 p.m. The winner will get a bid to the NCAA March Madness tournament.
Fans wouldn’t have it any other way.
RMU junior Justin Downs broadcasts the RMU Gameday Exclusive show on the university’s athletic department website. For fans, he said, a season’s worth of excitement has built up for tonight's game.
“Game in and game out, students are packing the stands for the basketball games,” he said. “The school might be on break, but there’s still a sense of nervousness echoing throughout the campus, hoping the team pulls out a victory.”
RMU won the past two NEC tournaments and went on to play on college basketball’s biggest stage, March Madness, in both 2009 and 2010. The team hasn’t yet cracked the winning column -- a formidable task considering it entered the tournament as the No. 14 and 15 seeds, respectively.
“It’s funny, but it almost seems to be taken for granted by the student body that the basketball team is going to win [the NEC Championship],” Downs said “There aren’t a lot of students on campus who’ve experienced anything less than an NCAA tournament game. That’s kind of surprising.”
RMU senior Beau Pappaterra, the team’s equipment manager, said recent success in the post-season only increases fans' expectations of the Colonials.
“There was definitely a bit of a drop off [in excitement] during the middle of the season, when we hit a rough patch,” he said. “There are lofty expectations when it comes to the basketball program and the team wasn’t living up to them. Now they are.”
The team went through a number of transitions this season. Andrew Toole took over as head coach after the departure of Mike Rice last year, and star point guard Karon Abraham sat out for a portion of the season with an MCL injury. Still, Downs said, the team managed to thrive.
“To me, the turning point was when Karon [Abraham] went down,” he said. “For whatever reason, the team started to gel together better and started to show signs of what made them successful in the past.”
For a university with about 4,000 undergraduates, the Colonials success is especially meaningful, Downs said.
“It’s exciting to see your school’s name when you’re filling out your tournament polls,” Downs said. “Especially at a small school like Robert Morris, to be in the national spotlight is something all the students take pride in, something they can tell their friends about.”
For some students, it's just fun to be a part of RMU's success, said senior Jarrod Shrupp.
“They shuttled students to the NCAA tournament game last season in Providence, and it was a blast,” Shrupp said. “The trip was long and the team lost, but the experience was something we’ll always remember. You don’t get too many opportunities like that, especially at a place like Robert Morris, so you really appreciate those moments. I would love to do that again.”
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