Moon Township — In what was billed as RMU’s biggest Women’s Basketball game in half a decade, Chandler McCabe and her revamped Colonials would show their heart and grit in a tough loss to the undefeated and Horizon League leading Purdue Fort Wayne. RMU would fall by a score of 63-54 on Friday night.
While the performance wasn’t bad, the wheels fell off at the end for Robert Morris, something Coach McCabe wants to get fixed immediately.
“We’re not a moral victory team.” McCabe said. “When you’re tied with the best team in the conference that hasn’t been beaten with four minute to go, you gotta win the game. We executed for 36 minutes, and the end was tough.”
The Colonials continued their hot form right from the tip-off. Isys Grady drained a nice 3-pt shot and followed it up with a nice pull-up jumper and two free throws putting her with 7 of the Colonials’ 9 points early in the 1st quarter.
Other than Grady, it took a while for the other 9 players on the court to get going. The Mastodons found it hard to get some of their early shots to fall, but the Horizon League leaders would show their skill as the 1st quarter went on and it carried over into the 2nd.
Purdue Fort Wayne would outscore Robert Morris 20-13 from the end of the first until the end of the second. A Katelyn Chomko three-pointer would see the Colonials only down by one at halftime.
Chomko’s 8 points as well as Naomi Barnwell’s 4 would keep the Colonials streak of double digit points off the bench continue even though their win streak wouldn’t.
“We need our bench to win. [Chomko] did her job, going 2/5 from 3 and eight points, and [Jennica Suggs] and [Micah O’Dell] saw limited minutes.” McCabe said, adding “In a close game, against a bunch of seniors, we’re gonna ride with our seniors, tired or not.”
The Colonials would start the second half like they did the first, fast and with points. RMU would outscore the Mastodons 14-8 and 12-11 in the first and third quarter tonight. Jada Lee and Raissa Nsabua would be the top playmakers during that stretch. Nsabua would score the opening five points for RMU, and her and Lee would end up scoring all but two points for the Colonials in the penultimate quarter.
Unfortunately for the Robert Morris, slew of turnovers and multiple lapses on defense would be the killer at the end of the day.
“You hold [Purdue Fort Wayne] to eight and eleven in the first and third quarter and they score 26 in the fourth quarter, and we’re tied going in, and we hang our hat on defense, and they had 37 points going into the fourth quarter, they end up with 63, that cannot happen. Period. Point blank. Fourth quarter defense.”
RMU would be outscored 26 to 17 in the fourth quarter alone, an unhealthy trend that finally caught up to the Colonials tonight.
“The previous four games, teams were outscoring us in the fourth quarter, and we said “Oh well we just had a big enough lead to sustain it and still win. A team like Purdue Fort Wayne, it’s not gonna happen, and we it happened again. So even though we’ve won, we haven’t learned those lessons.”
RMU will have time to try to fix these late leaks of points, as they’ll wait to take the court in six days against Milwaukee on Thursday, February 6. As for a message for her team, McCabe stood firm on her message since her first game.
“Turn the page. I’ve been saying this from the beginning, you either win or you learn. And so this has to be a learning lesson.”
The Colonials road trip is scheduled to tip off Thursday against Milwaukee at 7 P.M. Then the team will travel to Green Bay to take on the Phoenix on Saturday, February 8 at 2 P.M. RMU will finally return home for a matchup against IU Indy on February 13.
