ROBERT MORRIS BASKETBALL COACH ANDREW TOOLE | PHOTO COURTESY OF ROBERT MORRIS ATHLETICS

Robert Morris will take on Alabama on Friday in the NCAA Tournament thanks, in part, to the adoption of an athletic philosophy honed at Alabama.

You can’t make this stuff up, which is part of the magic and the madness of March.

The connection is Colonials Athletic Director Chris King, who used to be an associate AD for the Crimson Tide.

In addition to earning a ring for ’Bama’s 2009 football national championship, King’s time in Tuscaloosa included working with and learning from then-Alabama football coach Nick Saban, who has so many championship rings he’s running out of fingers.

“If you focus in on your sideline, your process, it doesn’t matter what they do,” King recalled Saban maintaining on one especially memorable occasion.

“I thought that was one of the greatest leadership lines I’d ever heard.”

Related: Robert Morris Faces the Madness of March With the Clarity of The Boss

King brought those words with him to Moon Township, and he’s applied them to RMU athletics in general and to a basketball program in particular that’s made a transition from the Northeast Conference to the Horizon League on the way to a Round-of-64 matchup on Friday in Cleveland.

RMU was a relatively big fish in one of the NCAA’s smallest ponds, the NEC. As a member, the Colonials could count on annual NCAA Tournament contention if not actually getting there, something they managed to accomplish in 2009, 2010, 2015 and 2020 (the year they qualified but never actually got there because there was no tournament thanks to COVID).

The Horizon League was a significant step up among mid-majors and there were growing pains attached, especially when initial recruiting to the new conference had to be done on zoom calls for a couple of years due to COVID.

“Extremely difficult,” is how King remembered that transition.

That was reflective in RMU’s records in men’s basketball, which resulted in losing seasons in each of the Colonials’ first four years in the Horizon, including a 10-22 slog in 2023-24.

This year, everything changed.

RMU won the conference regular-season and conference tournament championships.

The latter is the one with the automatic invitation to the Big Dance attached and the one that emphatically justifies the move up the ladder to the Horizon.

“I always knew it was the right move,” King maintained. “Any time you move up it takes four or five years to see the success. It takes time to recruit, time to invest in resources.

“There were people that questioned it. I said, ‘Patience, it takes time.’”

Head coach Andy Toole took care of the Colonials’ sideline, King focused on the big-picture vision and, some five years later, here they are.

Merely hearing the Robert Morris name called on Selection Sunday is a phenomenal accomplishment.

And the residual fallout includes an anticipated impact on enrollment, fundraising, revenue generating, recruiting, recognition and the overall advancing of RMU’s brand.

There’s also a pride among alumni that seemingly only athletics can generate.

“It’s a win for the entire RMU community, not just athletics or men’s basketball,” King insisted. “It’s a moment of pride for our entire university.”

One that will resonate whether the Colonials survive and advance or get trampled by Alabama, a representative of the mighty SEC, the nation’s highest-scoring team and a 23-point favorite against a presumably overmatched opponent.

But whenever this ends it’ll be back to the grind eventually, back to focusing on RMU’s sideline no matter the challenges that presents.

As was the case with Duquesne last year in the wake of the Dukes’ magical NCAA run, Robert Morris remains a college team in a pro town.

That’s a tough sell, even at Pitt.

Tough enough that it’s often a losing battle in terms of interest, attendance, media attention and, most importantly, revenue generated, so King chooses not to fight it.

“I’m focused in on RMU and RMU athletics,” he insisted. “I can’t control the fan base for the Steelers, the Pirates, the Penguins, Pitt or Duquesne. I have to focus in on our sports.

“I’m not really competing with Pittsburgh. I’m focused on day in, day out at Robert Morris. I don’t worry about the outside variables.”

Some days are better than others, and that’ll always be the case.

But the day the Colonials beat Youngstown State for the Horizon League tournament championship (March 11), the day RMU rallied from a 13-point, second-half deficit to beat Oakland in overtime in the Horizon semifinals (March 10), and the days dating all the way back to mid-January that have seen Robert Morris win 16 of its last 17 games, including the last 10 in succession, those have been some of the best days imaginable for an under-sized, under-funded and under-appreciated athletic department that just keeps competing.

“In 28 years in athletics, 16 years as AD, I’ve never been around a group of guys in men’s basketball where I never thought we were gonna lose a game,” King insisted.

“When we were down 13 in the second half against Oakland, I was turning to the donors and saying, ‘We got this.’”

Nick Saban would have no doubt appreciated the sentiment, as well as how far the Colonials have come and, above all, how they got there.

Mike Prisuta is the sports anchor/reporter for Randy Baumann and the DVE Morning Show. He’s also the host of the Steelers Radio Network Pregame Show and the color analyst for Robert Morris University men’s hockey broadcasts.