Meyer On Morris: A Personality Test

By: By Paul Meyer

Men's Basketball | 2/17/2015 5:00:00 AM

Moon Township, Pa. – There have been other, more significant late-game shots that have won games recently for Robert Morris in the Charles L. Sewall Center.

Think Dallas Green's hurried baseline jumper against Mount St. Mary's in March, 2009. Or Mike McFadden's free throws against Kentucky in March, 2013. Or Lucky Jones' overtime put-back against St. Francis Brooklyn just a year ago.

But none can match the shot that hoisted the Colonials over Central Connecticut State, 53-52, last Saturday.

That's because "Tate's Tip'' fell through the net after the game was officially over, but not decided, and it meant the Colonials won a game in which they, again officially, never held a lead in the second half.

"That is amazing,'' RMU coach Andrew Toole said. "I'm sure it's happened somewhere, but I've never seen it. That's pretty incredible.''

"It's just crazy,'' Aaron Tate said. "It's unexplainable.''

Oh, come now. It's explainable.

"He has some good collateral with the basketball gods,'' Toole said.

Yep. After 20 minutes during which Robert Morris never led, those basketball gods allowed Tate's tip to fall through after the final horn sounded with the ball still bouncing ever so softly on the rim.

So Central Connecticut State, which led, 52-51, when the clock showed 0:00, wound up losing by a point.

"The difference in the game was the rebound at the end,'' CCSU coach Howie Dickenman said. "We were one rebound away. It looked like we were going to have a three-hour ride home to (Connecticut). Now it's going to (feel) like a 10-hour ride home.''

The Colonials will take a long bus ride to Connecticut, and beyond, this weekend when they play at Sacred Heart and Bryant. While they celebrated wildly following Tate's tip, with some encouragement from Toole, it remains to be seen if that bucket will have any positive long-term impact.

As we've seen so often this season, just when you think these Colonials have turned a corner, they wind up lost in another maze.

"We had two really good wins on the road at Mount (St. Mary's) and at St. Francis Brooklyn (three weeks ago) where we defended late in the game, and we talked about that and how great it was,'' Toole recalled. "Then it was almost like we exhaled because we'd accomplished something.''

Those two wins lifted the Colonials to 6-2 in the Northeast Conference. One might have thought, "OK, here we go.''

Except there they didn't.

They followed those two victories with three losses, including two at home, in their next five games.

"I hope (the CCSU win) can kind of create some momentum for us,'' Toole said, "We can show guys some of the efforts we made (and) we can clean up mistakes that we made and maybe this is the time that they finally get it. I don't know. I hope so. We'll coach like that, but it's probably too soon to tell.''

That's because Toole and his staff, and perhaps even the players themselves, really don't know what mindset the Colonials will have from game to game.

"We have an odd personality,'' Toole acknowledged.

Consider this.

The Colonials two nights before the CCSU game lost at home to LIU Brooklyn, 63-62, after which Toole and his staff had a 90-minute answer-seeking session with their players.

You'd think after that these Colonials, facing a CCSU team that was 3-23 overall and 1-12 in the Northeast Conference, would be ready to charge out and play suffocating defense, clean the glass like five bottles of Windex and run offense so efficiently that the Blue Devils would trail, 23-3, before they ever knew what hit them.

Not quite.

Before the game even started, the Colonials were without senior co-captain Lucky Jones, suspended for a violation of team rules.

Then they slogged their way to an 8-4 lead in the first five and-a-half sluggish minutes, only to fall behind 16-13 five minutes later. Oh, they'd regain a lead for a brief time, but they eventually headed back into their locker room down, 30-27, at halftime.

They would not lead again until the game was "over.''

"Our team overall has an odd personality,'' Toole repeated. "You would think you'd be ready to knock a wall down and storm the court and, you know, be super hyper. It's just not who we are. I wish we were more that way, but we have to try and do the best we can with the personality that we have.

"I don't think we came out with the proper energy or respected the game as much as you're supposed to and tried to mail it in. In the first half, when you have cardboard cut-outs of five basketball players, your defense isn't going to be very good. I don't know (another) team that plays the game attempting to move as little as humanly possible. I think our guys would love to play half-court games. The idea of getting up and down the floor (and) moving quickly from side to side are things we try and see if we can avoid as much as possible.''

After the Blue Devils nudged their lead to 44-33 with 13:20 remaining, Toole put his defense into a full-court press.

That, finally, got the Colonials going.

"We've been sluggish in our second halves and not defending teams,'' junior Rodney Pryor said, "so it was good to see that.''

The Blue Devils scored only four points in the final 10 minutes -- and went scoreless for the last 3:21.

"I thought the last 10 minutes or so we really tried to pick up our energy and our intensity,'' Toole said. "We were in (defensive) stances. We were alert. We were active. We were able to make some positive plays. Guys were giving second and third efforts to contest shots or take away shots. That's how you have to play if you want to be serious about this. That's what we try and talk about in the locker room -- that if you can play that way consistently, who knows where things might take you.

"We played a lot better down the stretch. We had more urgency. It's amazing how that works, right?''

Downright incredible.

After CCSU held its 44-33 lead, Marcquise Reed (10) and Rodney Pryor (eight) scored the Colonials' next 18 points, pulling RMU to within a point at 52-51.

The Colonials got the ball for the game's final possession with 16 seconds left. The Blue Devils had fouls to give and fouled twice to disrupt RMU's offensive set. Then, with six seconds remaining, Reed had the ball.

He drove into the lane and put up one of his trademark floaters with two seconds left. The ball hit the rim but didn't go in.

"I thought it was going in,'' Reed said. "It went in and out.''

Tate was ready.

"I told myself to get the rebound if he missed,'' he said.

Tate tipped the ball. And it bounced on the rim.

The final horn sounded.

The ball bounced on the rim again.

"I was nervous,'' Reed said. "My heart kind of stopped.''

"I thought the same thing as Marcquise,'' Tate said. "Seeing it bounce and not knowing what's going to happen kind of makes your heart drop a little bit.''

The ball bounced yet again.

"I was like, 'We can't touch it anymore,''' Pryor said. "But from my angle, I knew it was going to drop (in) the way it was bouncing on the rim.''

And then the ball stopped bouncing. And slowly began to roll. Gravity took over.

"Once it started to roll,'' Reed said, "I knew it was going to go in.''

Which it did.

"It was nice to get a bounce go in our direction,'' Toole said. "Very happy it was Aaron Tate who tipped it in. I mean, I would be happy if it was anybody, but Aaron does the right thing every day. Every opportunity he has, every decision he makes is the right one.''

The Colonials immediately celebrated Tate making this correct move by exuberantly taking him to the floor near the RMU bench.

"They almost squished me,'' Tate said, laughing. "I was hurting. It's supposed to be fun, but it was hurting me.''

A couple players didn't initially jump on the pile, so Toole provided the impetus by gently pushing them forward.

"Because it's supposed to be fun,'' he said. "You're supposed to have fun. You just won at the buzzer. Why wouldn't you want to jump on the pile? As soon as Aaron Tate walked into the locker room, about five guys started dumping water all over him. That's what it's about. I think it's fun to play hard. I think it's fun to compete. I think it's fun to give your best effort. Hopefully, I was trying to teach them that lesson.''

Toole paused, thinking ahead.

"Maybe that can carry us through our next game,'' he said.

With these Colonials and their "odd personality,'' that's what it always comes down to -- maybe.

FREE THROWS AND FOUL SHOTS: There were only two free throw attempts in the RMU/CCSU game. Reed made both of them en route to a team-high 18 points.

Contrast those two attempts to the 84 foul shots launched by Fairleigh Dickinson and Wagner in their game Saturday, which "featured'' 56 personal fouls. The Knights were 23-of-34 from the free throw line. Host Wagner was 36-of-48.

Wagner won in overtime, 83-79, after the struggling Knights put up quite an argument before sustaining their 12th consecutive loss.

Wagner's Mike Aaman had an interesting afternoon. He scored 20 points, getting 12 of those in his 18 free throw attempts, shot just 4-of-17 from the field and grabbed 23 rebounds, 14 of which came on the offensive glass.

"All the rebounds speak to my shooting percentage," Aaman told the Staten Island Advance. "I just kept missing shots in close, and I was able to get the rebounds."

NEC NUGGETS: Will Jones' suspension for the CCSU game last longer than that? "We will see moving forward,'' Toole said … The Colonials' 53 points against the Blue Devils were the fewest they scored in a win in the Sewall Center since Green's shot against Mount St. Mary's gave them a 48-46 victory in the 2009 NEC championship game … Aaman's rebound total is tied for third on the NEC all-time single game chart … St. Francis Brooklyn took another step toward winning the regular-season title with a 71-62 win against visiting Sacred Heart Saturday. The Terriers' sixth straight victory moved them to 12-2 in the league with four games remaining. They're three games ahead of Robert Morris and Bryant, each 9-5 … Bryant fell into a second-place tie with the Colonials following its 75-68 loss at Mount St. Mary's. Byron Ashe scored 24 points for the Mountaineers. Dyami Starks led Bryant with 18 points … LIU Brooklyn extended its winning streak to four by beating host St. Francis University, 79-74, in overtime in Loretto. Earl Brown produced his fifth consecutive double-double by getting 22 points and 12 rebounds for the Red Flash.

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