The college basketball offseason is here, and we decided to have some fun over the next few months, ranking ALL 364 teams in D1. Number 210 is Robert Morris basketball.
Before you say we’re crazy – or that all of this is up for debate, let’s go over the very intricate process of how we came to this conclusion. We took a very statistical approach – with the help of Chat GPT – taking into consideration everything from March Madness wins and finishes, to AP Poll appearances, to conference players of the year. And then, a good friend of ours, Scott Blanchard, took our approach to the MAX.
Click here to visit the FIRST article, which explains how the formula works!
Here’s the breakdown of Robert Morris basketball!
NCAA Tournament Success
- Championships: 0
- Finals appearances: 0
- Final Fours: 0
- Elite Eights: 0
- Sweet 16s: 0
- NCAA wins: 2
- Bids: 9
Consistency Over Time
- Wins per season: 14.7
- Bids per season: 0.18
- AP Polls: 0
Player Quality & Talent
- All-Americans: 0
- NBA players drafted & played: 0
- Conference Players of the Year: 8
Conference & Other Success
- Conference regular season titles: 12
- Conference tournament titles: 10
- NIT titles: 0
- Other tournament titles: 0
Overall scoop on Robert Morris basketball
Robert Morris basketball has 50 seasons exactly of DI hoops, and they’ve pretty much either been good or bad and not much in the middle.
With nine NCAA Tournament appearances, the Colonials are good for one about every five years, which is an insane rate for a now Horizon League team. And all of them have been pretty evenly spaced, coming in 1982, 1983, 1989, 1990, 1992, 2009, 2010, 2015, and 2025.
Of course, a good chunk did come early on with the first two under head coach Matt Furjanic. He inherited a program that was struggling to make it in Division I and turned them around, later on heading to Marist.
However, that arguably was a good thing for RMU, as Jarrett Durham came in, did just as good of a job with three tourney bids, and stayed 12 years, winning NEC Coach of the Year twice. Unfortunately, his tenure ended with a 32-76 record over the last four seasons.
After some more rough years, future St. Bonaventure coach Mark Schmidt got his first DI head coaching job here. While he didn’t bring the Colonials dancing, he did up their level of play. When Mike Rice took over in 2007, it didn’t take him long to go 73-31 in three seasons. He would take them dancing twice before heading to Rutgers, and having an infamous career there.
But since Rice left, it has been Andrew Toole for the last 16 seasons. He’s only had two trips to March Madness, but nine winning seasons with seven of them resulting in 20+ wins. After a pretty bad stretch during COVID and the start of NIL, Toole seems to have the tools now, going 48-20 over the last two years with the NCAA Tournament bid in 2025. Amazingly, Toole is still just 45 years young, taking over the position in 2010 at just 29.
Robert Morris has also won two games in the NCAA Tournament, taking down 16-seed North Florida in a play-in in 2015 and 12-seed Georgia Southern in a play-in in 1983. After that 1983 win, they only lost to 5-seed Purdue, 55-53, in the next round, nearly setting up a mini Cinderella run.
For Robert Morris basketball, the history is evident, even if there have been some very bad seasons and no big NCAA Tournament runs. Practically every mid-major program out there would take their resume otherwise.