Defending Horizon Tournament champion Robert Morris turns the page with new team

What will they do for an encore?

Following a year in which both Robert Morris basketball programs finally captured the attention of Horizon League fanatics, the Colonials are tasked with — shall we say? — keeping the ball bouncing.

“Every group is different,” Robert Morris coach Andy Toole said Wednesday during an interview at the Horizon League’s annual media day in Indianapolis.

Toole’s latest team won its first Horizon Tournament championship in five years following RMU’s departure from the Northeast Conference in 2020.

But it’s time, he said, to turn the page.

The league will reveal its men’s and women’s preseason polls Oct. 9.

“We knew with the success we were having — our championship run, the NCAA Tournament performance (90-81 first-round loss to Alabama) — that we were going to lose guys to new opportunities,” Toole said. “We understand, as coaches, that that’s part of the landscape of college basketball.”

Since losing several key players through the transfer portal, including Horizon League Player of Year Alvaro Folgueiras to Iowa, Toole has retooled the Colonials’ roster in hopes of making another run at a title.

“Our focus was really trying to rebuild a team and a roster that we felt could compete for another Horizon League championship,” he said. “We believe we’ve done that, but obviously there’s a long way to go.”

RMU moves on without any returning starters. The lone holdover is junior swingman Ryan Prather Jr., who started 12 games a year ago and averaged 8.3 points in 35 games overall.

“He’s got to be a guy that helps to promote what we’re talking about on a daily basis in the locker room,” Toole said. “He’s the only guy that really understands what the finished product looks like.”

While the men’s team flipped a 10-22 record from the previous season into a 26-9 mark and a trip to the NCAAs, the RMU women’s team did a miraculous turnaround of its own under first-year coach Chandler McCabe.

The Colonials won 10 Horizon regular-season games and reached the conference tournament semifinals after winning just six games overall and a meager two in the league in the previous year under former coach Charlie Buscaglia.

“We had 10 seniors last year that helped a little bit,” McCabe said at the league’s media day site. “We had a group that struggled to believe at first, but once we started compiling wins, they really bought in and we were able to make a run at the end.”

RMU boasts four seniors, including leading scorer Noa Givon (10.6 ppg) and Carlynton product Jada Lee (7.5). The others are a pair of former WPIAL standouts who transferred from Division I schools.

Bailey Kuhns (Mt. Pleasant) led Mercyhurst in scoring (14.3 ppg), while Aislin Malcolm (Chartiers Valley) averaged 4.6 points 18 minutes per game in a reserve role at Pitt.

Other former WPIAL players among the group of D-I transfers to join the Colonials are sophomores Mallory Daly (Seton LaSalle), who arrives from Buffalo, and 6-foot-4 center Ava Leroux (South Fayette), who comes by way of Elon, where she overcame a life-threatening head injury following an auto accident in 2023 while on break during her freshman season shortly before Christmas.

After being cleared to play at Elon last season, Leroux, who is the daughter of former Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman Francois Leroux, averaged 4.4 points and 2.0 rebounds in 21 games for the Phoenix.

“We have a lot of pieces,” Chandler said. “Our four seniors are ready to play a college basketball game today. We have five freshmen who are going to be our future. They have the potential to be extremely good, all five of them.”

Included is Oakland Catholic grad London Creach.

“We’ve got a lot of local players who were really, really good in high school,” Chandler said. “I’m really excited about this group, and I think we have a really good shot to win a championship this season.”

In this age of transfer portal mania, traditional rivalries reboot almost annually now. But while Toole bid adieu to such players as Folgueiras and Amarion Dickerson (USC), he’s quietly looking forward to RMU’s first game Nov. 4 at … Iowa.

That’s right, when the Colonials arrive in Iowa City, they’ll recognize a familiar face on the Hawkeyes’ bench.

“(Folgueiras) is my 11-year-old son’s favorite player,” Toole said, “so he’s still trying to figure out who he’s rooting for. I told Alvaro, ‘I’m going to be talking so much junk to you on the sidelines,’ and his response was, ‘I already know, coach.’ That part will be nice and we’ll be able to deliver his Horizon League championship ring when we’re out there.

“But when that ball goes up, one of Alvaro’s greatest assets is his competitiveness, as well as is ours. So, I think everyone knows that there’s responsibilities that we have once that game starts and it’ll be a good competitive battle.”