The defending champs are coming back.
Not that Robert Morris has won anything yet, but a victory Wednesday night over the current Horizon League leader is a start for the Colonials, who won their first Horizon Tournament championship last season and look to be making a late-season run.
Ryan Prather Jr. scored 17 points, DeSean Goode and freshman Darius Livingston added 16 each and Robert Morris limited Wright State to one field goal in the final 4 minutes and beat the first-place Raiders, 72-66, at UPMC Events Center.
“A really, really important win for us tonight,” Robert Morris coach Andy Toole said. “We challenged everybody to fight for 40 minutes. We did a really good job in the first half. We knew they were going to get more aggressive and more physical. They did that in the second half and kind of stalled us offensively.”
Robert Morris (15-10, 7-7), which won for the fourth time in six games, shot 53.1% in the first half and jumped to a 40-27 halftime lead.
The Colonials played without sophomore Josh Hill, who was out with a foot injury. The 6-foot-11 reserve forward was averaging 7.5 points and 4.4 rebounds in 22 games, including six starts.
Wright State (15-9, 10-3), which shot just 30% in the first half and 35.4 for the game, scored the first four points of the second half and steadily crept closer to the lead.
The Raiders finally overtook the Colonials with 7 minutes, 29 seconds left on Kellen Pickett’s basket to put Wright State ahead for the first time since early in the game, 58-57.
The Raiders widened the advantage to 61-57 at the 6:18 mark but couldn’t hold the lead when RMU took it back for good with 2:06 left on two free throws by Nikolaos Chitikoudis, who logged his seventh double-double with 12 points and 12 rebounds.
“In the second half, we weren’t able to finish some of the stuff at the rim and get some clean looks that we got in the first half,” Toole said. “But our defense really stepped up and made some huge stops for us.”
Goode’s 3-pointer with 1:16 to go extended RMU’s lead to 68-63.
After Pickett scored for Wright State, Prather’s floater in the paint and a pair of Albert Vargas free throws in the final minute secured the victory for Robert Morris.
“I feel like our chemistry each day is getting better and better,” said Goode, RMU’s leading scorer in his first season with the Colonials after transferring from IU Indianapolis. “Just knowing people’s tendencies, knowing kind of how they play gives us all more confidence. We were good together today.”
Michael Imariagbe led Wright State with 16 points and 13 rebounds. Solomon Callaghan and T.J. Burch added 14 points and Pickett finished with 11 rebounds for the Raiders, who maintained a half-game lead in the Horizon standings over second-place Oakland, a 91-78 loser at Cleveland State.
Wright State, which leads the Horizon League in scoring defense (75.2 ppg), entered the game having won 10 of its past 11 games and three in a row. The only loss during that stretch was an 85-79 decision to Cleveland State.
Robert Morris trails league-leading Wright State by 3 1/2 games with six games remaining. The Colonials travel to Youngstown State on Saturday for a rematch of its 80-77 overtime victory at home against the Penguins on Dec. 17.
“The message is, ‘Get better tomorrow. Take care of Thursday,’ ” Toole said. “ ‘Take care of our bodies, recover, start to prepare, learn what we can do better this (next) game. Can we better?’ We’ve got to keep our focus.”