You would never suspect, at least from watching Robert Morris practice in the empty Sewall Center in Moon, that anyone in the building had won anything yet.

Mike Rice may have been named conference coach of the year yesterday, and Jeremy Chappell player of the year, and Bateko Francisco defensive player of the year, but, even if the Colonials' mascot had been named Northeast Conference Mascot of the Year as well (does it still look essentially like Barbara Bush?), it wouldn't have lowered the emotional temperature of the basketball team's final full-blown practice before the conference tournament begins on this same floor tomorrow night.

Players were throwing each other on this same floor, in fact, so intense were the final preparations for what is undoubtedly a singular strain of March's madness.

"That's the way we do it," Rice smiled in the late afternoon. "I took a little bit from Phil Martelli [at Saint Joseph's] and a little bit from Pitt's intensity."

Those would be Rice's previous two stops in a coaching career that isn't likely to peak at Robert Morris, especially if the Bobs can put together the three-game winning streak required for an NCAA tournament bid. But that's part of what makes the NEC so compelling. No one in this conference, not even the coaches, can take 'em one at a time. Starting tomorrow night, if you don't win thrice, the result isn't nice.

In other words, Robert Morris, should it play as intensely and efficiently as it practices, will play more desperate basketball in the next seven days than Pitt will in the next two or three weeks.

"Pitt knows they're going to the [NCAA] tournament; they can lose their first-round game in the conference tournament," said Chappell, the Robert Morris senior from Cincinnati who is the only player in the 28-year history of the NEC to accumulate 1,500 points, 500 rebounds, 250 assists, 250 steals and 200 3-pointers. "Around here, it's a lot different. These next couple of games mean everything."

In one sense, NEC teams have stored some emotional energy because they do not have to be obsessed with bracketology and bubble politics. They can ignore their RPI. They don't even have to be all that familiar with their body of work. There is no bubble. No one's scouring the Internet for intelligence on how many NEC teams are going to the tournament. That would be one. They win the conference tournament, they go to the ball. They don't, they don't. It's actually liberating.

"It does help us," Chappell said. "It helps you focus, to buckle down."

But that part of it's over. Now it's only that every possession, every loose ball, every put back is the fulcrum of immediate elimination. It's why Rice spent practice yesterday barking reminders of exactly that: "Urgent decisions! Winning possessions! They went 17 for 25 here last time because you weren't focused!"

They would be your terrible Terriers of Brooklyn Heights, otherwise known as St. Francis of N.Y., St. Francis being the patron saint of the dribble drive (like there's another way). But the Terriers didn't have to dribble much when they played here Dec. 4, when they indeed scalded Robert Morris with 17 3-pointers that resulted in one of only five conference losses Mike Rice teams have endured against 31 wins the past two seasons.

The Terriers went 7-11 in the conference, 10-19 overall, but the top-seeded Bobs (15-3, 21-10) are clearly loath to take even one unfocused step.

"In the NEC, it's all about three games in March," Rice said. "That's what we've been trying to communicate. March doesn't care about MVPs. March doesn't care if you're a freshman. March just wants to know if you're tough enough.

"Pitt knows it's playing in the NCAA tournament and that it's a 1 or a 2 seed. We're playing for our dreams here and, as we like to point out, no one dreams of going to the NIT."

Robert Morris likely will wind up in the NIT if it fails in any of the next three games, but if it comes out the other side, all the rights and recruiting privileges assigned thereto come shrieking into play for the future of the program, which is large potatoes.

You might assume otherwise, that merely by winding up as the 15th seed in somebody's NCAA bracket and getting dispatched to the Taco Bell Arena in Boise, Idaho, to lose, 80-51, to Memphis borders on the pointless. But what's the more difficult sell to a 17-year-old, the tournament-fresh Colonials or the obscure commuter school in a Pitt-dominated market whose previous NCAA appearance was in 1992?

Robert Morris can do this. Rice's second team is better than the first, better defensively, better in the low post, better positioned emotionally to avoid getting eliminated on its own floor, as it did in conference semifinals last season.

"Our team is confident," said Chappell, coming to the final days of a brilliant if vastly under-appreciated college career. "Our practices are just so competitive; I know we'll know what to do."