Opinion
Vukovcan: Robert Morris Becoming Biggest Surprise in Pittsburgh Sports

Plenty has been going on in the Pittsburgh sports scene over the past month with the Steelers end of the season collapse, the Pirates continuing to not spend money, the up and down performance of the Pitt Panther basketball team and all of the transfer portal news in college football.
So, an actual positive story that’s going on that hasn’t received any attention is the resurgence of the Robert Morris men’s basketball team.
Let’s be honest, it’s been a real rough stretch for Andy Toole’s program since leaving the NEC Conference after the 2019-20 season and joining the Horizon League.
The numbers don’t lie: 4-15 overall in 2020-21, 8-24 in 2021-22, 16-17 in 2022-23 and 10-22 last season. In conference play over the last 4 seasons, the Colonials are a combined 24-52.
For whatever the reason, that’s just not good enough and raised a lot of questions, namely, was moving to the Horizon Conference a mistake and would Andy Toole’s program ever be able to compete?
One of, if not their biggest issue has been retaining players that they have on the roster. Year after year, it’s been a turnstile of players leaving for the transfer portal.
Ironically, the much-discussed transfer portal is the reason for this season’s turnaround.
Well, it’s a small sample size but thanks to a tremendous job this offseason, the Robert Morris men’s basketball program is playing their best stretch of basketball since their final year in the NEC when they went 20-14 and qualified for the NCAA Tournament.
Heading into Saturday’s game against Oakland, Robert Morris is 14-7 overall and 6-4 in conference play. Here are some of the things that they’ve accomplished with this start that not many people saw coming.
- *Already a four-game overall improvement from last season with at least 11 games remaining.
- *First time winning four straight games on the road since 2019-20.
- *First time they have been 14-7 overall since 2012-13.
- *Seven more wins would give them their first 20+ win season since 2013-14.
So, how has Robert Morris been able to have this breakthrough season? Well credit has to go to Toole and his staff for a masterful job in the portal and bringing in players that were talented but more importantly that are coachable and guys that wanted to be coached.
Here’s a quick recap of how Toole was able to construct this roster:
- Alavaro Folgueiras – Played at RMU last season.
- -Amarion Dickerson – A two-year starter at Mineral Area College (Missouri). Led JUCO in blocked shots last year. Has been huge for RMU this season.
- -Josh Omojafo – Played two years at Gannon, D2 All-American last year.
- -Kam Woods – Transferred in from NC State.
- -Ryan Prather Jr – Transferred in from Akron.
- -DJ Smith – Transferred in from Bowling Green.
Keep in mind that Toole’s team has been able to have this start with Justice Williams out for the season and was likely their best returning player. After transferring in from LSU last year, Williams started 29 games and averaged 12.9 points per game.
The question now is can Robert Morris keep this up the rest of the season and possibly make some noise in the Horizon League Tournament?
But more importantly, is this going to be just a one-year story or can Robert Morris use this as a steppingstone to continually win in the Horizon League?
The second question is one that can’t be answered yet and will all be determined by defections from the roster after this season. If Toole and RMU’s NIL team are able to keep the core of this roster together and add some offseason pieces than maybe the winning can continue.
There’s plenty of time to worry about that in March so the focus should be on this season and how far they can go and how many wins can this team accumulate?
We’ll start to learn more about this team this afternoon as they host Oakland at the UPMC Events Center starting at 2 PM.
