It wasn't the good shooting or the ball control that Robert Morris coach Mike Rice first credited with his team's victory.

It was bowling.

After the Colonials looked sluggish in a win against Central Connecticut State Thursday, Rice's wife, Kerry, told him to take the team bowling.

"I hated my team after the Central Connecticut game, and my wife said 'Go bowling,'" Rice said. "I said 'What are you talking about? They need to work on 3,000 things.'"

But on Friday, Rice and the Colonials went bowling before watching film.

"We had kind of a light moment," Rice said, "Gosh, did we need that."

The Colonials came back Sunday night more intense and more cohesive and crushed rival Mount St. Mary's, 80-62, to advance to the Northeast Conference championship game.

Second-seeded Robert Morris will play at No. 1 Quinnipiac Wednesday in the NEC championship game. The winner advances to the NCAA tournament.

If the Colonials win, they would become the first team since Rider in 1994 to successfully repeat as NEC tournament champions.

Quinnipiac beat Long Island, 83-78, Sunday afternoon to advance to the title game. The Bobcats defeated Robert Morris, 87-78, at the Sewall Center in the only meeting between the two this season.

"They can be happy," Rice said of his players regarding Sunday's win, "but they can't be satisfied. They've got one more."

Leading 51-48 early in the second half, Robert Morris went on a 13-0 run to take a 16-point lead with less than 10 minutes to play.

"It looks like in the second half, we just ran out of gas," Mount St. Mary's coach Milan Brown said.

Robert Morris shot 58.3 percent in the second half while limiting the Mountaineers to 22.7 percent shooting. And unlike the past two meetings between the two this season in which the Colonials let a double-digit lead evaporate, the Colonials never allowed the Mountaineers within 12 points for the rest of the game.

"We knew that Mount St. Mary's, with the way they attack, they can get hot at any second and get hot really fast," junior guard Gary Wallace said. "So we knew we had to keep doing what we do and play defense for a full 40 minutes. That's what we did tonight."

Mount St. Mary's never led, despite tying the score twice in the first half, and the Colonials successfully avenged a 63-61 loss to the Mountaineers in the regular-season finale. That loss denied Robert Morris' bid for an outright NEC regular-season title.

Robert Morris shot 53.7 percent against a Mount St. Mary's team that leads the NEC in field-goal percentage defense.

"That was kind of tough to swallow because we hang our hat on being such a good defensive team," Brown said.

Both teams excelled at protecting the ball in the first half. The Colonials turned over the ball once before halftime and the Mountaineers did it twice. Both average more than 13 turnovers per game.

The Colonials led at halftime, 47-40, which came close to matching the total offensive output between these two schools in last year's NEC championship game, which Robert Morris won, 48-46.

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