By Paul Meyer
www.rmucolonials.com
Jan. 28, 2010
Meyer on Morris Link
Moon Township, Pa. - Last Saturday, after his Robert Morris University Colonials rallied in the second half and won at Monmouth 66-53, head coach Mike Rice paid Mezie Nwigwe what seems the highest compliment in the RMU coach's vocabulary.
"He was a senior tonight,'' Rice said.
A senior. In this Colonial season, that is high praise indeed.
Throughout the past four months, Rice has made no secret of his desire for his seniors to play like seniors. To lead. To defend. To score. To carry this team.
On the surface, that seemed a reasonable enough request.
The Colonials returned five seniors from a team that finished 24-11 and played in the NCAA tournament.
However, with the exceptions of center Rob Robinson, who played his first season at RMU and averaged 11.2 points per game last season, and guard Jimmy Langhurst, a two-year starter who averaged 9.9 points per game as a junior, this was not the kind of senior class that seemed capable of being the backbone of a team.
Josiah Whitehead, like Robinson a junior college transfer, averaged just 4.2 points per game last season. And Dallas Green and Nwigwe, who came in with Langhurst in 2006-07, averaged 6.6 and 6.5 points, respectively, a season ago.
This did not appear to be a senior class capable of scoring a lot of points simply because hardly any of its members had had to score a lot of points in the past.
Consider ...
When Langhurst, Green and Nwigwe arrived as freshmen in 2006-07, they joined a team that was 15-14 the season before and returned four players who would finish with 1,000 career points each.
That group included senior Derek Coleman, who averaged 11.9 points and 4.7 assists per game in 2005-06, juniors Tony Lee (12.6 points, 7.1 rebounds, 3.4 assists) and A.J. Jackson (17.0 points) and sophomore Jeremy Chappell (14.1 points, 5.7 rebounds).
That 2006-07 team went 17-11 and lost only Coleman, who finished his career with 1,042 points, 17th on RMU's career list.
In 2007-08, Jackson, who averaged 16.9 points and 7.8 rebounds per game as a junior, Lee (15.9 points, 6.1 rebounds, 4.4 assists) and Chappell (14.4 points, 5.1 rebounds, 2.7 assists) returned.
That team wound up 26-8, won the Northeast Conference regular season championship and played in the National Invitation Tournament. Lee, the NEC Player of the Year, closed his career with 1,489 points, seventh in RMU history and just ahead of Jackson, who is eighth with 1,455 points.
Last season, Chappell, who averaged 14.9 points, 4.8 rebounds and 2.4 assists per game as a junior, Langhurst (9.6 points) and Bateko Francisco (8.4 points) returned.
Chappell, who was the NEC Player of the Year, ended his career with 1,875 points, third in program history. Francisco was the NEC Defensive Player of the Year.
The point is, before this season, the Colonials in recent years always had a ton of points and starting experience returning. Not so this season. And the situation became even worse when Langhurst went down with a season-ending knee injury in late December. That left Robinson, Green, Nwigwe and Whitehead - none of whom will score 1,000 career points - to carry the senior class load.
Pretty heavy burden.
"No question,'' Rice said.
"I think it's very hard,'' Green said. "In our sophomore and junior years, (Green and Nwigwe) really were just role guys -- come in the game and give some energy. But now coach is actually depending on us to do the things we never did in the past, so I think that transition is very hard for us. And now since Jimmy's out, I think there's more demand for the seniors for leadership and more teaching the younger guys how to play the game. I've tried to teach, but I still need to be taught.
"But I think Mez and me and Jimmy and Rob and Josiah have done a pretty good job of teaching the freshmen about the pace of the game or, 'If you turn the ball over, don't worry about it. Just go to the next play.' But we still need improvement.''
"At first, it was like (Rice) put everything on our shoulders,'' Nwigwe said, "but then again that's what seniors have to do. I knew he was going to be like this because he was telling us at the end of last season that he didn't call us juniors anymore. He said, 'You guys are seniors now, so you have to get ready for it.' I was ready for it.''
Ready or not, it was apparent early on that this season would not start like other recent seasons.
Rice constantly chided his seniors - and Gary Wallace, the team's only junior - to provide the consistency to which he'd grown accustomed since 2007-08, his first season at RMU. Rice sprinkled in his five freshmen to try to achieve some cohesiveness.
"In the (previous) two years, it was probably easier going in because you knew you had a Jeremy Chappell who was going to get you 17 (points a game),'' Rice said. "You knew Tony Lee was going to get you 14, seven rebounds, six assists. You kind of knew.''
This season?
" You really don't know where you're getting your points from, you rebounds from, your assists from from game to game.'' Rice said. "But somebody has always stepped up. It seems somebody has always been there to pick up the slack. It's interesting to find out. You're not sure of your rotations. You don't know who's going to be the guy that minute, that half, that game, so you just have to kind of be very creative with your minutes and go with the guys who are rolling right then and there.''
At Monmouth, Nwigwe was that guy in the second half.
Monmouth zipped to a 31-21 lead early in the half, but Nwigwe's three-point play three minutes in blunted the Hawks' momentum.
"The only thing I was thinking about was, 'We have to cut this lead before it gets too late,''' Nwigwe said. "Somebody had to step up, so I just tried to do what I had to do.''
Less than a minute later, Nwigwe hit from downtown to trim Monmouth's lead to 33-27. Five minutes later, the Colonials pushed their lead to 37-34. After Monmouth tied the score at 37, Nwigwe made a jump shot that gave RMU a 39-37 lead it never lost and began a 28-12 run that decided the game.
Nwigwe scored 12 of his team-high 15 points in the second half. On the night, he also had seven rebounds, two assists and two steals.
He'd been a senior.
"Basically, I'm growing up - maturing,'' Nwigwe said. "Every game, I'm trying to step up. You know, we have a lot of young freshmen on our team, so I just try to step up and show them the ropes.''
In the game at Monmouth, Nwigwe produced his eighth double-figure scoring game of the season, matching his career high. He also had eight last season. He's scored in double figures in five of the past eight games, totaling 87 points - an average of almost 11 per game. In the past four games, he's grabbed 26 rebounds.
His production has increased after he and Rice had a sit-down in the first week of January.
"Mez, you're a good player,'' Rice said, "but you have to know you're not going to be the leading scorer in RMU history. You might not be the (NEC) Player of the Year. You're not going to do this.''
Or apparently that.
"All you can do is play to your strengths,'' Rice said. "Try to be the Defensive Player of the Year. Try to do this. Try to do that.''
Nwigwe listened.
"I've eventually accepted my role,'' Nwigwe said. "I'm just trying to be, like he said, a senior.''
Nwigwe's recent productivity has helped the Colonials build a 7-1 NEC record, tying them with Quinnipiac for the league lead as they prepare to play Long Island (6-2) at the Sewall Center Thursday evening.
The Colonials have won eight of their past nine games to improve their overall record to 12-8, perhaps an indication that they're a better team now than they were a month or so ago.
"Definitely,'' Nwigwe said. "In the Monmouth game when we were down 10, if this was a month ago, we probably would have put our heads down and everybody would have tried to have done their own thing. But now we're kind of getting used to each other, so everybody knows their strengths and their weaknesses and we learn how to play with that.''
Rice still sees need for improvement - from Nwigwe and others.
"Mezie is stepping up for us in certain situations, certain games,'' Rice said. "Mezie has to start acting and playing like a senior, and that means consistently doing that time and time again. Mezie has had some of the best games of his career since I've been here, but it's just been inconsistent. He's got to start playing like a senior instead of a guy who's been here for four years.
"That's what you do as seniors. They have to be more consistent. They have to understand what it takes to win. Mezie did that for us in stretches against Monmouth, but he has to be more consistent with that. All of our seniors (do), really.
"A senior makes winning plays. A senior understands how hard it is to win. Seniors tell the freshmen when they're shooting too quickly. Seniors rally the troops when something goes wrong. They self-police themselves (so) I don't need to be screaming. They'll take care of it on the floor.
"They're starting to act like seniors more instead of guys who have been here for four years, and I think that's important. They certainly have to have an urgency. We don't have it enough. We don't have it consistently. We've had stretches of basketball where we've played very hard and show how talented we are, but just not on a consistent basis.
Rice paused, reflecting.
"Maybe it's something where they're just starting to learn it and understand the urgency and the roles they have,'' he said. "But unless they get it, we're not going to win an NEC championship. I like where we are right now, tied for first and 7-1, but we're not good enough to win a championship right now. We're not consistent enough to win a championship right now. We're talented enough and we're deep enough. We're just not right now consistent enough.''
Maybe these seniors will get it done. Maybe after having been behind at the start of the season in terms of experience at having to be the guys who do the heavy lifting they'll add to what Coleman and Lee and Jackson and Chappell did.
And maybe, in the end, they'll be remembered as a class that did something no other class has done at Robert Morris - produce three consecutive 20-win seasons.
Not to mention being the winningest class in program history. Chappell, the only member of his recruiting class who played four seasons at Robert Morris, helped the Colonials to 82 wins in his career. The current senior class has produced 79 victories.
And counting.
"We all know this, but honestly we try not to think about it,'' Nwigwe said. 'Like coach Rice will say, 'What's the most important game?' And we say, 'The next one.' The next game now is LIU. That's what we're worried about.''
