Saunders: This RMU Team is Andy Toole’s Best Work Yet

INDIANAPOLIS — Andy Toole has been the head coach at Robert Morris since 2010. In the itinerant world of collegiate athletics, that is essentially a lifetime. Only 20 coaches in all of college basketball entered the 2024-25 season with a longer tenure in one place.

At Robert Morris, Toole has presided over most of the school’s greatest moments. There was the 2013 NIT win over Kentucky, and another against St. John’s the following year.

In 2015, he took his team to the NCAA Tournament, where the Colonials won a game for the second time in program history, beating North Florida in the First Four before losing to Duke. 

Toole’s strong teams were the impetus for the construction of UPMC Events Center, the new home of RMU basketball, in 2019. That year, the Colonials won the Northeast Conference tournament on their home floor, clinching another March Madness berth. That won was taken away by the COVID-19 pandemic. The following season, again buoyed by the strength of Toole’s team and its new building, Robert Morris moved up from the NEC to the Horizon League.

RMU Celebrates NEC Championship March 10, 2020 — David Hague/PSN

In the 14 seasons before this one, Toole earned 226 wins, 14o in conference play. He’s the winningest coach in program history — by nearly 100 wins. He is an incredibly accomplished coach, and Robert Morris should feel fortunate that Toole has chosen to spend such a significant portion of his career in Moon Township.

But despite all of those accolades and all of those accomplishments that Toole achieved leading into the 2024-25 season, this has been the best coaching job of Toole’s career.