Robert Morris wins Horizon League, will play in 1st NCAA Tournament in 10 years

The surprising Robert Morris Colonials will play in the NCAA Tournament for the first time in a decade.

A first, too, as a member of the Horizon League.

Picked to finish ninth among 11 teams, Robert Morris got hot after a slow start to the season and raced all the way to a conference tournament championship Tuesday night.

Josh Omojafo turned in his first double-double of the season with 24 points and 13 rebounds, four others scored in double figures and top-seeded Robert Morris earned the Horizon League’s automatic bid to the Big Dance with an 89-78 victory over No. 4 seed Youngstown State in the Horizon Tournament title game at Corteva Coliseum in Indianapolis.

The Colonials shot 46.8% and made 11 of 22 3-point shots.

“I love being around these guys,” Robert Morris coach Andy Toole said. “It’s so much fun for me to watch them play the way they’ve been playing,”

A winning way, you see. If not for a two-point loss at Wright State on Feb. 2, Robert Morris would be riding a 17-game winning streak. As it is, the Colonials have won 10 in a row.

“You have to have some guys that are willing to accept and do whatever they can to help the team, and that’s what these guys have done all year,” Toole said.

The most recent victory came against a Youngstown State team that also was making its first appearance in a Horizon Tournament final.

“Give Robert Morris a ton of credit,” Youngstown State first-year coach Ethan Faulkner said. “They’ve played great basketball since about Christmastime. They certainly continued it tonight. They just played better than we did. We didn’t have our best stuff tonight. They played excellent.”

Robert Morris’ Kam Woods was voted the tournament’s MVP, averaging 20 points, 6 assists and 5 rebounds during the past two games, a 79-76 victory over No. 6 Oakland in the semifinals and the win against Youngstown State.

Woods, who played sparingly last season on North Carolina State’s ACC champion and Final Four team, basked in the spotlight if only for a moment.

“This is a place that I feel I can be myself and find myself again,” the Alabama native said of Robert Morris’ suburban Moon Township campus.

Omojafo and Bowling Green transfer D.J. Smith joined Woods on the all-tournament team, as did Youngstown State’s Nico Galette and Oakland’s Allen Mukeba.

On a team with some of the Horizon League’s biggest stars — Alvaro Folgueiras won Player of the Year and Amarion Dickerson won Defensive Player of the Year — Omojafo again came up big in a key moment for the Colonials.

His 27-point performance Feb. 27 sparked Robert Morris’ 82-68 victory at IU Indianapolis to clinch the regular-season championship for the Colonials.

On Tuesday, the former Division II star at Gannon shot 6 for 15 and converted 11 of 14 free throws against Youngstown State.

But it was Omojafo’s contribution on the backboards that impressed Toole the most.

“Thirteen rebounds,” Toole said. “It was as impactful as anything he did tonight.”

Woods (17), Folgueiras (14), Dickerson (13) and Smith (11) backed Omojafo in the scoring column for Robert Morris (26-8), which never trailed.

“Alvaro, Amarion, Kam, you hear a lot about those guys,” Toole said, “but in order to become a championship-level team, you have to have guys who are willing to accept, embrace and excel in their roles. The people in the locker room and the people who watch us all the time know the value they bring. The value is immense.”

With the NCAA bids quickly shaping up, Robert Morris will learn who it will next face when the 68-team field is finalized Sunday night.

Meanwhile, Youngstown State (21-13) was seeking its first trip to the NCAA Tournament as a Division I program. The Penguins last played in the Division II Tournament in 1977.

“We made history,” said junior Juwan Maxey, who led the Penguins with 23 points. “We’re the first team to make it to the Horizon League championship. We’ll remember this feeling, and now we’ll know what to expect next year.”

Like Youngstown State, Robert Morris was bidding for its first Horizon League Tournament championship. But the Colonials had won nine conference titles in men’s basketball from 1982-2020, first as a member of the ECAC Metro Conference and later when it evolved into the Northeast Conference.

Robert Morris hasn’t made an NCAA Tournament appearance since winning the NEC Tournament in 2015, when the it went on to beat North Florida in a First Four play-in game before losing to Duke in the first round.

The 2020 team won the NEC Tournament in the program’s final season in the league but couldn’t play in the NCAA Tournament, which was canceled amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“I don’t think you ever are fully resolved from the emotions of that 2020 experience,” said Toole, whose teams have won three conference tournaments in his 15 seasons at Robert Morris. “This is a different group, a different year.”

Galette added 21 points and 7-foot-3 Gabe Dynes, the nation’s second-leading shot-blocker, finished with 11 points, 10 rebounds and six blocks for the Youngstown State, which was playing for a sixth consecutive game without leading scorer E.J. Farmer (15.1 ppg), who had been hospitalized with an undisclosed illness.

With little recognition in the preseason, Robert Morris came on strong and hit the postseason running.

After a first-round bye, the Colonials mowed down three opponents — No. 8 seed Wright State, Oakland and Youngstown State — to secure the conference’s automatic bid in their fifth season in the league.

“Really proud of this group,” Toole said. “There’s a lot of talent in the Horizon League. We got 23 assists on 29 baskets tonight. That’s just great team basketball.”

Robert Morris weathered multiple runs by Youngstown State throughout the championship game and played for chunks of time in the second half without Dickerson, who picked up his fourth foul with 12:45 left.

The Colonials started hot, scoring the game’s first 11 points, six by Woods. But it didn’t rattle Youngstown State, which clawed back within 19-17 midway through the first half and stayed close the rest of the way.

Robert Morris led at halftime, 34-29.

Youngstown State got within 54-52 with 11:23 left on a 3-point shot by Cris Carroll.

Folgueiras responded with a 3-pointer, and Robert Morris eventually pushed the lead to double digits on another Folgueiras 3 with 4:58 remaining, giving the Colonials a 73-62 advantage.

Their largest lead was 13 points twice after that.

Afterwards, Omojafo sat quietly with a victory hat ajar on his head.

“It’s a surreal feeling,” he said. “We had a little chip on our shoulder and that motivated us to keep going and stay the course. We won it and we’ve got a lot more to give.”