MOON TOWNSHIP – Robert Morris (4-3, 2-0 NEC) was back at Joe Walton Stadium in the second game of their four game home stand. This week the Colonials welcomed Long Island University (1-7, 1-2 NEC) to Moon Township for some NEC action.
The game would start fast with both teams scoring on their opening drives with RMU hitting a 43 yard field goal and LIU getting a three yard touchdown pass. This scoring would only be the beginning as this game had all offense today and RMU would walk away with the conference win 45-31.
Robert Morris would throw all of the punches first and would make the halftime score 23-7. Quarterback Anthony Chiccitt would connect with his two main targets on back to back drives with Noah Robinson taking a 75 yard play to the house to make the score 10-7 and then on the next drive Shawn Charles would take a 30 yard pass into the endzone to go up 17-7.
After a performance of 19-25 passing for 351 yards and 3 total touchdowns for Chiccitt.
“Chiccitt is always poised,” Clark said. “He never gets rattled. That is the great thing about the young man, he never gets upset or rattled. He just stays calm in the pocket and plays hard.”
Coming off of that performance Anthony Chiccit was able to speak on what he was able to do out there today.
“It wasn’t anything super special, I was just getting the ball in the hands of my playmakers Noah and Shawn and they made it really easy”.
Continuing on the offensive side of the ball both wide receivers for RMU had a special day today. Noah Robinson and Shawn Charles both had over 100 yards with Charles going for 141 and two TD’s and Robinson going for 126 and 1 TD. Chiccitt was able to find them both throughout the game and the results showed.
After the game I was able to catch up with coach Clark about the offense performance for Charles today.
“He is coming into his own and that’s the great thing about him. We got Noah and now we got [Shawn], we have weapons on offense that will work out well.”
In the second half the game turned into a back and forth shootout where the offenses were just scoring at will. After the game, Chiccitt was able to speak on if he likes these types of games or if at times he wants to calm the game down.
“Every time we go out there I am expecting to score, it’s fun. Defense picked us up last week where we didn’t have a great start and this week we had to pick them up.”
In the first half the defense for RMU was really able to give the offense some momentum with holding LIU to only 10 points. The Colonial defense was also able to force fumbles on back to back drives where one was run back for a touchdown and the other game gave the offense some good field position.
After halftime though however the defense was non-existent. LIU would come out and score on three straight possessions with their drives being three plays for 60 yards, six plays for 70 yards and five plays for 79 yards to take the lead at that point.
When a team scores on three straight possessions a defense might hang their heads and get down but you got to get back out there and get the job done. Coach Clark was able to speak on what he said to the defense to get their heads back in the game.
“You just have to tell them it happens,” Clark said. “It’s a situation where they got the best of them but they still have to go back out there and stop them, we have to put ourselves in position to win the football game.”
Making it hard on the RMU defense was LIU quarterback Ethan Greenwood who had a total of 369 yards of total offense. After that, Game Coach Clark spoke on why he was so effective in the game and how he gets his defense to stop him.
“We had to hang on for dear life,” Clark said. “We knew he was going to be a problem coming in to the game, we knew he was going to be an issue. We were trying to do some different things but we were missing tackles in him every time, and every time we missed a tackle on him he was making it happen”.
RMU will continue this home stand with another NEC game next week when they take on Rival Saint Francis. Kickoff is set for 2 p.m.
