Men's Basketball 11/16/2014 8:59:00 AM By Paul Meyer

Meyer On Morris: Details Make All The Difference

Moon Township, Pa. - After painfully getting kicked to the curb in their season opener Friday night, Robert Morris this evening faces the Heels of what could be a two-boot weekend.

The Colonials, who lost to Lafayette, 77-50, in the opener, play at sixth-ranked North Carolina Sunday at 6:00 p.m. in a game that will be televised on ESPNU.

Among the many motivations for the Colonials is this: "We don't want to have an ugly time on TV,'' senior Dave Appolon said.

Sunday's game comes on the heels of a pretty bad looking opener in front of their fans in the Charles L. Sewall Center.

"If you lose by 27 to Lafayette,'' RMU coach Andrew Toole said, "Sunday could be … "

Toole paused for at least a five-second count before quietly finishing: "Bad.''

That's certainly no disrespect to Lafayette, which thoroughly outplayed the Colonials in every facet.

The Leopards, also playing their season opener, shot 51 percent from the field, made 22 of their 28 free throw attempts and outrebounded the Colonials, 43-27. The bigger Leopards overwhelmed the Colonials in the paint, 34-14, and handed Robert Morris its worst home loss since Feb. 19, 1996, when Rider rode into the Sewall Center and left with a 94-67 victory.

"We didn't play hard, and obviously it started with the older people -- me and Dave,'' senior Lucky Jones said. "We just didn't play hard. We didn't bring any type of energy. We didn't give any effort."

"We didn't follow the coaches' game plan,'' Appolon said. "We took unnecessary shots, and that brought us down.''

"We didn't make shots,'' Jones said. "We had a lot of open shots. Obviously I shot it tremendously terrible (2-fo-14 from the field). We got open looks. We just didn't knock them down. The ball just didn't find the rim for us."

Oh, the ball did find the rim for the Colonials. Plenty of times. That was a big part of their problem. What the ball didn't find was the bottom of the net.

Robert Morris missed 10 of its first 11 shots. It didn't make its second field goal until 11:40 remained in the first half. Four minutes later, the Colonials made their third field goal, which pulled them to within 23-8. Bad as that was, it never got any better. Only worse.

The Colonials trailed at halftime, 36-16. There was a juncture late in the second half when it seemed possible that RMU could have pitched a shutout at Lafayette after intermission and still not won. With three minutes remaining, Robert Morris had only 32 points. However, some late garbage-time field goals and 10 free throws got the Colonials to 50 points.

Robert Morris made only 13-of-52 field goal attempts, including five of their 22 casts from international waters. The five starters -- Jones, Appolon, freshman Elijah Minnie, sophomore Kavon Stewart and junior Stephan Bennett -- were a combined 7-of-29 from the field. Subtract Appolon's 4-for-8 performance, and the other four starters were 3-for-21.

Want more bad stuff? Probably not, but here you go.

Freshman Marcquise Reed was a decent 4-for-9 from the field. Add that to Appolon's 4-for-8, and you have 8-for-17. So the rest of the Colonials missed 30-of-35 field goal attempts.

On Jan. 16, the Colonials will play St. Francis Brooklyn in the Sewall Center. That game has a scheduled tip of 9 p.m. Maybe the game against Lafayette should have had a 9 p.m. start, too. So the Colonials could have started over.

This game was indeed not pretty on the Colonials' part.

"At the end of the day, you have to face the fact that they got the best of us,'' Jones said. "We have 29 more games. It's a long season.''

It will be a long season if the Colonials don't improve quickly and learn from their multitude of mistakes against Lafayette.

"Obviously it was not the way we wanted to start our season,'' Toole said. "There's a lot of things we need to clean up and get better at. I think we allowed our offense to affect our defensive effort many times. We talked about the importance of getting stops and defending and having your defensive energy and effort being consistent regardless of whether the ball goes in the basket or not. I thought we strayed a little bit from our plan at times offensively and defensively.''

Which detracted from their focus.

"It's a lack of urgency and a lack of understanding how important each and every detail is, from Lucky all the way down,'' Toole said. "We've talked about how important each possession is, how important all the details are, and we try to fight those. We don't necessarily embrace that because it's difficult. It's difficult to be urgent and alert and engaged all the time.

"There are two ways to learn. There's the easy way and there's the hard way. The easy way would be like being a sponge and absorbing all the information that you're getting. Then there's the hard way. We saw the hard way (Friday night).''

Perhaps it wouldn't have made a great difference, but it did not help the Colonials' cause that Minnie, who was the sixth true freshman to start a Robert Morris opener, picked up two fouls in the first 2:50 and Jones got his second foul less than two minutes later.

"It changed (things) dramatically,'' Toole said, "because then your rotations are pretty much out the window. You have to save some guys because of foul trouble. We had some guys playing some different positions than they had previously worked on in practice, but again that all comes down to detail.''

The Colonials do have seven players who are making their Division I debuts this season, so there is some inexperience, and that does make a difference. For example, five minutes into the second half the Colonials had a group on the floor which included only one player, Chuck Oliver, who had even one season of D-I experience.

There will be growing pains.

"Sometimes we get in a little bit of a mode in practice where if the guy we're guarding doesn't make the shot, then (the players think) that's a good defensive possession when that's not always the case,'' Toole said. "Sometimes when the guy makes the shot, it doesn't always mean it's a bad defensive possession. We're very outcome-oriented instead of process-oriented. As coaches, we're trying to talk to them about making the right decisions each time the ball moves or handling whatever situation presents itself and then allowing the outcome to take care of itself.''

All that said, Lafayette appears to be a pretty good team, and the outcome wasn't totally unexpected on Toole's part. Maybe not the lopsided-ness of it certainly, but it figured to be a tough go for his squad.

"You have to give credit to Lafayette,'' Toole said. "They're a tough matchup for us in an opening game. They have a number of guys who can make shots, and they pass the ball and move the ball so well and play in such great offensive rhythm. I knew it would be a difficult test for our zone (defense) as an opener, and clearly we failed the test.

The Colonials also had recent history working against them in their opener.

"We've talked about this before -- all of our firsts have been terrible,'' Toole said. "Our first day of practice was bad. Our second day was much better. Our first intrasquad scrimmage was terrible. Our second was much better. This seems to be following the trend of our firsts being bad. Hopefully our second game can be better. But again that's also, to me, learning the hard way.''

Based on that, here's a rather sobering thought for Colonials fans as they await the tip in Chapel Hill. This will be RMU's first road game this season.

"I'm looking forward to figuring out how we can get better,'' Toole said. "That's all I can care about. How we can get better. Does it help that we're playing a top 10 team in the country in our next game? Probably not. But you know what? What better opportunity to go out and respond to a very poor performance (against Lafayette) and see if we can try and make the right decisions.''

The game at North Carolina is the first of four for the Colonials in the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament. After a game at Bradley Wednesday night, they'll resume Atlantis action at Georgetown Saturday, then play at Tennessee-Chattanooga Nov. 26 and against either Coastal Carolina or Louisiana-Monroe the next day.

"The tournament is great competition with Georgetown and Carolina and then a chance to test ourselves down in Chattanooga against Tennessee-Chattanooga, which won 18 games last year, and then Coastal Carolina or Louisiana-Monroe,'' Toole said. "It's a great opportunity for our guys to go and play against two of the best programs in the country and challenge ourselves and give guys the opportunity to play against the best. That's part of what we're supposed to do here.''

*******
Minnie, the highly touted freshman from Central Valley High School, played only 11 foul-plagued minutes against Lafayette. He didn't score, taking just one shot. He had a rebound and two blocked shots.

Minnie is the first true freshman to start an opener for Robert Morris since Yann Charles in 2010. The four other true freshmen who started an opener are Jonathan Clark and Jeremy Chappell (both in 2005), Keith Jones (1995) and Forest Grant (1980).

*******
North Carolina also opened its season Friday night, beating visiting North Carolina Central, 76-60. Marcus Paige, North Carolina's outstanding junior point guard, scored only eight points in his 31 minutes, making just two of eight field goal attempts.

"A thing I was curious about was trying to get our guys to understand that Marcus is a pretty doggone good player,'' Tar Heel coach Roy Williams said. "If the other team's playing a box-and-one sometimes, it'd probably be good to have some guys go set some screens for him and help him out a little bit. That wouldn't be the dumbest thing I'd ever seen. We've got to work on that a little more.''

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Players Mentioned

#22 Lucky Jones: G/F; 6' 6"; Senior; Sr.

#3 Kavon Stewart: G; 6' 0"; Sophomore; So.

#45 Stephan Bennett: F; 6' 9"; Junior; Jr.

#2 Marcquise Reed: G; 6' 3"; Freshman; Fr.

#5 Elijah Minnie: F; 6' 8"; Freshman; Fr.

Players Mentioned

#22 Lucky Jones
: 6' 6"; Senior; Sr.
: G/F

#3 Kavon Stewart
: 6' 0"; Sophomore; So.
: G

#45 Stephan Bennett
: 6' 9"; Junior; Jr.
: F

#2 Marcquise Reed
: 6' 3"; Freshman; Fr.
: G

#5 Elijah Minnie
: 6' 8"; Freshman; Fr.
: F