College hockey aficionado and Pittsburgh media personality Mike Prisuta contributes regular commentary on the RMU men's hockey team. This is his latest:

It hasn't gotten any better for Robert Morris since 3:04 of overtime in Rochester, N.Y.

It isn't likely to any time soon.

"The reality really sunk in on Monday when we didn't have practice," head coach Derek Schooley acknowledged on Thursday, the day before the 16-team NCAA Tournament opened without the Colonials.

Demeanors might worsen considerably before they get better, especially when RIT faces off against Minnesota State on Saturday afternoon in South Bend, Ind.

That's the NCAA spot Robert Morris would have drawn if only…

...the Colonials had scored one more goal on March 20 in the Atlantic Hockey Conference semifinals against Mercyhurst.

...they'd taken one fewer offensive-zone penalty, won one more faceoff, made one more save or blocked one more shot.

They didn't, and the best team in RMU's 11-year NCAA Division I history will have to live with what resulted.

Schooley is already at peace with that aspect of how the 2014-15 season ended.

"It is what it is, we're a one-bid league right now," he said.

Atlantic Hockey has been that in 11 of its 12 seasons and there isn't much more the Colonials can do to alter that equation.

"Short of winning 28 or 29 games, and the right 28 or 29, no," Schooley agreed in the wake of posting a 24-8-5 overall record that wasn't quite good enough.

Robert Morris will play twice at Michigan next season.

Maybe the Wolverines will be ranked and the Colonials will win both games.

Maybe Clarkson, Massachusetts-Lowell and Penn State will all show up for the Three Rivers Classic in December occupying spots in the top 20, and the Colonials will pad their PairWise ranking at the expense of two of them.

Maybe two wins at a Dartmouth tournament that will also include Merrimack and Union (college hockey's 2013-14 national champion) will be enough to mathematically alter RMU's fate in the event the AHC playoff title and automatic bid somehow slips away

But that's a lot of "maybes."

The more likely scenario, the more realistic expectation is that the Colonials can do no more in 2014-15 than they did this season save for finding a way not to lose in Rochester.

They fired 62 pucks on net and attempted 104 shots in 63:04 of semifinal dominance against Mercyhurst.

The theory will be if they can do that again, if they can repeat next season what they were able to achieve this season in terms of their style of play and what that translated to in the standings, it could be, should be good enough the next time.

"We just do what we did," Schooley said of his team's approach to 2015-16. "I don't think what we did this season was wrong. We have to make sure we learn from it and learn from what happened two seasons again when we had 19 wins (and won the Atlantic Hockey postseason and secured the program's first NCAA invitation) and have a good offseason of training and make sure we're focused and ready to go from the start."

The offseason program commences on April 1.

Perhaps the sting of 2014-15 will have subsided somewhat by then.

Or, perhaps, it never does and winds up driving the Colonials in 2015-16.

"To be ranked as much as we were ranked this season, to have 24 wins, right now still the fourth-most in the NCAA, we've put ourselves in the discussion of being on the map," Schooley said. "We still have more to do.

"We want to get back to the NCAA Tournament on a consistent basis and not be there for just one game."

That goal proving unattainable this season doesn't mean it will be next season.

It just means the Colonials will have to wait a little longer before taking their next inevitable step.  

A Michigan State University graduate, Prisuta is a longtime member of the DVE Morning Show and previously served as a reporter for the Beaver County Times and as a columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Follow Mike on Twitter at @DVEMike.