MOON TWP, Pa. — Robert Morris (6-4) and Youngstown St. (4-5) opened up their Horizon League schedules on Wednesday evening when the Penguins walked into UPMC Events Center and used their pace and speed to handily defeat the Colonials by the score of 72-58.
Each team started the game 0-of-5 from the field and the Colonials even led by multiple possessions during this stretch but after the Penguins found their footing, their pace-of-play got the Colonials defense into some tough looks as they finished the first half shooting 14-of-28 and built a 14-point lead that the Colonials could not fight back from.
“Obviously when you are not scoring, you’ll look at defense and say ‘well if we could have held them to 15 points, we would have won the game,'” Robert Morris head coach Andy Toole said following the game. “Well that doesn’t really happen so in a 73, 74 possession game, I think our defense was where it needed to be.”
The Colonials opened the game with a burst of energy as they forced a shot clock violation on the Penguins initial offensive possession of the game and turned it into a pair of free throws for Josh Omojafo. Then, Omojafo scored on a fast break on the next possession to push the Colonials lead to 4-0.
The Penguins answered with a free throw and a turnaround jumper from EJ Farmer to cut the deficit to just one. Kam Woods entered the game as the first man off of the bench for Andy Toole’s squad and made an immediate impact. He re-extended the Colonials lead after a cutting layup and a corner three in consecutive possessions.
Woods finished the game as the Colonials leading scorer as he ended with 14 points on 5-of-15 shooting.
“The frustrating thing is when you add guys, it kind of shuffles the deck and you got to get re-calibrated again,” Toole said. “That is the challenge. I thought Kam did some good things, I thought he did made some gambles that I did not love. … We haven’t had him in six games so he has got to get some rust off and we have got to get acclimated with what our rotation is going to look like.”
Unfortunately for the Colonials, that was their lone triple of the first half and this appeared to have woken up the Penguins offense. Following Woods’ three, the Penguins went on an 11-0 run that was capped off with a corner three by Juwan Maxey.
Maxey led all scorers with 16 points on a 5-of-8 three-point shooting night. He added an assist and four rebounds in the blowout win.
“Obviously, not our best performance tonight. We just really never could get any rhythm offensively and a lot of credit to Youngstown St.,” Toole said. “Their defensive numbers coming in have been excellent and they showed why. They did a great job and didn’t allow us anything easy.”
A layup by Ryan Prather Jr. stopped the run but by the under-eight timeout, the overall run by the Penguins was 16-4 which helped build a 23-13 lead. The Penguins extended that lead to 14 points by halftime and led 35-21 at the break.
After trading buckets to start the second half, the Colonials deficit climbed to 21 points but then they went on a quick 11-3 run that pulled themselves back within striking distance. The run was capped off by DJ Smith’s three which was just the Colonials second of the entire game.
Following the outburst, the Penguins defense clamped up again and turned their 11-point lead into a 14-point victory. In the loss, the Colonials shot just 20-of-58 from the field and 3-of-23 from three-point range.
They received 11 points from Amarion Dickerson and 9 points each from Ryan Prather Jr. and Josh Omojafo in the loss.
The Penguins saw three other players reach double-figures in addition to Maxey’s 16 points. Jason Nelson scored 13 points while Nico Galette scored 12 points in the win over the Colonials.
The win for the Penguins stands as an upset as the Colonials entered the game ranked No. 210 in the NET rankings while Youngstown St. sat at No. 303. The Colonials are back in action on Sunday when they hit the road to face Purdue Fort Wayne, the conference’s highest ranked and only top-100 NET team.
