The piercing sound of his voice echoes above everything else. The fire in Andy Toole has been rekindled. The passion is there.<\/p>\n
Same coach. Different players.<\/p>\n
Nearly four months to the day after the Robert Morris men\u2019s basketball team gave No. 2 seed Alabama a scare in the NCAA Tournament, the Horizon League\u2019s reigning coach of the year was auditioning with another team inside UPMC Events Center.<\/p>\n
You see, Toole lost his old team, a 26-9 club that claimed the school\u2019s first Horizon League championship. Most of its members hit the NCAA transfer portal, some even on a gamble.<\/p>\n
So, while he\u2019s been fixed on getting to know a brand-new group, he knows his players are getting to know him, as well.<\/p>\n
It is another team, he hopes, that is built to continue the Colonials\u2019 surprising rampage of last season in spite of a season-ending, 90-81 loss in the NCAA first round.<\/p>\n
\u201cGetting into the tournament did help us,\u201d said Toole, entering his 16th year armed with a new contract extension through the 2028-29 season at RMU\u2019s suburban Moon campus.<\/p>\n
\u201cGuys saw the way we utilized some of those guys, that we had some success, that we were in the NCAA Tournament. It certainly attracted some of these guys to this program.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among them Albert Vargas, a 5-foot-10 senior, who is bidding to become the team\u2019s No. 1 point guard as a Division II transfer from Southern Connecticut State.<\/p>\n
Vargas, a product of New York\u2019s Washington Heights Expeditionary Learning School in the city\u2019s Bronx borough, first played two junior college seasons at nearby Monroe University. He then earned all-Northeast-10 first-team honors at Southern Connecticut State, where in his only season he averaged 17.5 points and 5.7 assists.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been getting ready for this moment,\u201d Vargas said. \u201cI\u2019ve been here for a little while, but I\u2019m still walking around this arena, this campus, and I say, \u2018This is the real deal.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI really imagine myself in the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
He figures to be heir apparent at point guard to leading scorer Kam Woods, the little-used transfer from N.C. State\u2019s 2024 Final Four team, who led Robert Morris in scoring last season.<\/p>\n
Woods, who averaged 14.9 points, 5.2 assists and 4.7 rebounds and was second in steals (1.7 spg) in the Horizon, was one of nine RMU players to hit the NCAA transfer portal at the conclusion of last season.<\/p>\n
While he\u2019s yet to fit in with another school, six of his former teammates have, including two with Power 4 conference teams.<\/p>\n
Horizon League player of the year Alvaro Folgueiras went to Iowa, defensive player of the year Amarion Dickerson transferred to USC, Josh Omojafo is at South Florida, D.J. Smith moved on to Mercer, Justice Williams opted for Western Michigan and Maurio Hanson Jr. will play at Maryland-Eastern Shore.<\/p>\n
The 6-9 Folguerias enhanced his NBA stock last season, averaging 15.3 points and 8.6 rebounds and racking up 14 double-doubles, including a season-ending 15 and 10 against Alabama.<\/p>\n
The 6-7 Dickerson, who averaged 14.6 points and 6.3 rebounds, is a fierce shot blocker who averaged 2.3 rejections a game, second to Youngstown State\u2019s Gabe Dynes in the Horizon.<\/p>\n
Like Vargas, Omojaro, who made several highlight film dunks throughout the season, came to RMU as a Division II transfer from Gannon.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s already on to the next chapter in the American Athletic Conference at South Florida.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey earned the opportunity that they got,\u201d Toole said. \u201cThey worked their butts off. They won a lot of games. They had a lot of success. They became more marketable because of the way they performed and the way they were able to contribute to a productive and winning team.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of coaches value that a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dilen Miller and Antallah Sandlin\u2019El are two other former RMU players yet to make a decision on a new school.<\/p>\n
Toole garnered a total of nine transfers in rebuilding RMU\u2019s program for this season \u2014 again \u2014 after bringing in six before last season\u2019s magical run, among them Ryan Prather Jr. from Akron, who is the only one to remain.<\/p>\n
Joining Vargas by way of the portal are 6-7 Kaleb Brown (Cal State Fullerton), 6-9 Nikolaos Chitikoudis (North Carolina A&T), 6-8 DeSean Goode (IU Indy), 6-11 Josh Hill (Arkansas State), 7-1 Ubong Okon (Alabama State), 6-3 Ta\u2019Zir Smith (Louisiana-Monroe), 6-6 Cam Wilds (Division II Clarion) and 6-5 junior college transfer Jeremiah Littlejohn (Western Oklahoma State).<\/p>\n
\u201cYou still have to make sure they\u2019re the right fit, that they are who you think they are,\u201d Toole said. \u201cCertainly, it\u2019s an easier conversation-starter when you say, \u2018We were in the NCAA Tournament, we won the Horizon League.\u2019 People are familiar with what a good league the Horizon League is and that it\u2019s hard to win in it. It definitely helped us in our conversations with these guys.\u201d<\/p>\n
Early-season summer workouts have been going on for a while now, giving Toole an early look at his latest haul. He can only hope this bunch will take a cue from the last group, a record-setting collection.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re certainly trying find guys that have some of that same competitive spirit that we lost in the transfer portal,\u201d Toole said. \u201cIt\u2019s way too soon to say that. We maybe have some more size, some more depth in size. We had some pretty unique and special players on last year\u2019s team. We haven\u2019t necessarily seen anybody separate themselves in that way yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Much like last season, Toole knows the process is just beginning.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019d have watched us play our first game against West Virginia (87-59 loss), and then watched who we became, you\u2019d have thought we\u2019d have had a complete roster overhaul,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re continuing to fight the fight. We\u2019re trying to build it from the foundation up \u2014 just like we always do \u2014 step-by-step. We\u2019re trying to promote the right things, emphasize the things that are going to contribute to winning, and we hope that these guys are embracing that. We\u2019ve seen that at times.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vargas, for one, already was feeling the excitement build.<\/p>\n
\u201cDeciding to come here was not a difficult decision once coach Toole got on the phone and gave me a straight, good vibe,\u201d said Vargas, who was contacted by \u201c15 or 20 schools,\u201d including UNC Greensboro and Appalachian State, while his name was in the portal.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe showed me a lot of confidence,\u201d Vargas said, \u201cand it makes you want to go to a place like this. That\u2019s the first thing that opened my eyes. He gave me my flowers, as I would say. He really saw my potential and he believed in me, so I believe in him now, now that I\u2019m here with him. It\u2019s great to have a coach like coach Toole. Our standards are really high, so we\u2019ve got to sustain that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vargas said he knew virtually nothing about Robert Morris before he arrived. Now, he\u2019s been eager to spread the word after just a short time being there.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are going to look at us like, \u2018Can they do it again?\u2019 So, of course, we\u2019re going to try to do it again,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to try to go back to the tournament and win more than one game. We\u2019re trying to make it far. We think we\u2019ve got the pieces, we think we\u2019ve got the players, we think we\u2019ve got the coaches. But you\u2019ve got to put the work in, and we\u2019re going to trust our team and we\u2019re going to trust our coaches.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to be a family and do it together.\u201d <\/p>\n
Just the sort of thing Toole was hoping to hear.<\/p>\n
Dave Mackall is a TribLive contributing writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The piercing sound of his voice echoes above everything else. The fire in Andy Toole has been rekindled.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,398,400,401,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-34766","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-basketball","11":"tag-ncaabasketball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}