MOON TOWNSHIP– On Wednesday, Robert Morris men’s basketball returned to action after a tough two point loss to Cleveland State on Sunday. That loss to the Vikings took the Colonials losing streak to four and as they only have one game left after Wednesday they were looking to start a winning streak going into the Horizon League tournament.
RMU 10-20 (6-13) would play host to Northern Kentucky 17-13 (12-7) but would ultimately fall 70-60
Early in the first half both teams were struggling from the floor as RMU was shooting 0-7 from the floor early on and NKU was shooting 1-6. However, that would change as NKU would finish the half shooting a blistering 52%. As for RMU they finished the half shooting a frigid 36% leading to a NKU 42-23 lead.
RMU also struggled with the pace of NKU. The Norse wanted to play a very up tempo brand of basketball pressing and also applying a 2-3 zone to allow themselves to get out and run on missed shots. This would work as they forced 12 RMU turnovers in the 1st half and added in 5 fastbreak points to go with their 14 points off RMU turnovers at half.
A big struggle for RMU the whole night was their trouble keeping NKU out of the lane and in turn being unable to into the lane on the offensive end. In fact RMU was out scored 26-16 in paint points.
One positive on the night was their rebounding. RMU out rebounded NKU 34-31 they did a great job specifically on the offensive glass as they were able to out rebound he Norse 12-11 and get 13 2nd chance points.
After the game Head Coach Andy Toole talked about his team’s struggle against the NKU zone.
“Their zone is is a challenging one and we just didn’t seem very comfortable in the first half with our attack of it.” Toole said. “We did we couldn’t really create any advantage. Our guards couldn’t really create enough advantage off the dribble, and then we weren’t able to really look down the court.”
RMU’s Josh Corbin had a second very nice game in a row as he had 14 and went 4-10 from three, including reaching the 1,000 career point plateau in the game.
Northern Kentucky’s Marques Warrick led all scorers with 28 and added in five assists. Warrick was able to get into the lane for a good part of the night.
RMU will be back in action Saturday March 2, as they’ll travel to Fort Wayne to take on Purdue Fort Wayne at 7 p.m.
