Rarely mentioned but highly dependable, Robert Morris guard D.J. Smith never met a challenge he wouldn’t accept.
Buckle up. This one should be a doozy.
“It’s always great to be on the highest stage,” Smith said. “I’ve played against a lot of pro guys in … national tournaments. It’s just a blessing to be on that stage once again, and I’m taking the challenge full on.”
On Friday, Smith and his eager teammates will face the challenge of a lifetime in the NCAA Tournament East Region at Rocket Arena in Cleveland. No. 15 seed Robert Morris (26-8) squares off against No. 2 Alabama (25-8) at 12:40 p.m. in a first-round game.
With a small, adoring crowd cheering Wednesday afternoon as they boarded a bus, the Horizon League-champion Colonials, who are on a 10-game winning streak and have lost just once in their past 17 games, departed UPMC Events Center for the two-hour ride to Northeast Ohio.
“It definitely feels like another game, but, obviously, at a higher level, bigger stakes,” said Robert Morris forward Amarion Dickerson, the Horizon League Defensive Player of the Year.
Since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985 and 68 in 2011, just 11 No. 15 seeds have beaten No. 2 seeds.
The most recent time was Princeton’s 59-55 victory over Arizona in 2023, the third consecutive season a No. 15 seed was victorious.
Robert Morris nearly pulled off the feat in 2010.
With Karon Abraham scoring a game-high 23 points, the Colonials came up short as a 15th seed in a 73-70 overtime loss to No. 2 Villanova in a South Region opener in Providence, R.I.
“I remember a lot about it,” said Robert Morris coach Andy Toole, at the time an assistant in Mike Rice Jr.’s final season as coach of the Colonials, then members of the Northeast Conference.
Toole took over the program the following season and since has led it through a transition into the Horizon League, where Robert Morris was one of the surprise teams in Division I this season, winning its first conference championship.
“I remember a lot about it, but I don’t know how much it applies to what we’ve got going on on Friday,” he said. “Sometimes, it just comes down to matchups. Bigger-stronger-faster is a huge determining factor on which team is successful. When we played Villanova in 2010, they weren’t the bigger team.”
SEC power Alabama, with six players scoring in double figures — led by All-American guard Mark Sears’ average of 18.7 points per game — and a school-record 11 victories over Associated Press Top 25 teams, tops Division I in the unofficial NCAA statistic known as “pace of play,” or possessions per 40 minutes.
The Crimson Tide have topped 100 points in a game eight times.
“These guys are big, long, strong, athletic, fast, so it’s a little bit of a different matchup for us (than in 2010),” Toole said. “It doesn’t completely apply.”
Nonetheless, he expected the Colonials to enter Friday’s game with the intent of coming away with a victory.
“You’ve got to go in with a mindset that you’re going to be able to compete and you’re going to win the game. That’s something that team certainly had in 2010,” Toole said. “They had a confidence and a toughness to them, and we’ve talked about the toughness and the competitiveness of this group. I’m expecting that they take the floor ready to start swinging.
Lucky Jones, the school’s all-time leading rebounder, played on Toole’s first Robert Morris team in 2010-11, a season after the 15th-seeded Colonials’ near-upset of Big East heavyweight Villanova.
Jones recalled how he was met on the floor by a no-nonsense coach who seemingly wanted to keep the magic going from that previous NCAA Tournament team.
“He was feisty, aggressive and very, very demanding because he knows how hard you’ve got to work to be successful,” he said of Toole. “I’m very appreciative of that.”
As another edition of March Madness is underway, No. 15 seeds, understandably, again are facing long odds of winning their first-round games against No. 2 seeds. Their combined record since the tournament’s expansions is 11-145 (.071), according to NCAA records.
On Wednesday, Robert Morris was a 22.5-point underdog. The other Friday game involving Nos. 2 and 15 seeds had No. 15 Bryant as an 17.5-point underdog against No. 2 Michigan State in the South Region.
A pair of Thursday games had two more No. 15 seeds as big underdogs, Wofford (19 points) against No. 2 Tennessee in the Midwest Region and No. 15 Omaha (19) against No. 2 St. John’s in the West Region.
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The Princeton victory over Arizona two years ago marked the first time that No. 15 seeds have won games in the tournament in three consecutive seasons.
Before that, Saint Peter’s took down Kentucky in 2022, and Oral Roberts upended Ohio State in 2021.
But, after a year in which the No. 15s failed to move on, Robert Morris, for one, hopes to return them to the spotlight once more.