Thursday was a first date that they would rather forget.

"It wasn't pretty," coach Mike Rice said.

Nothing against Monmouth, the bottom seed and its first-round dance partner in the Northeast Conference tournament, but Robert Morris tolerated that ugly night's quarterfinal victory in order to move onto its next spin across the Sewall Center floor: Rival Mount St. Mary's at 3 p.m. today in the semifinals.

---

Scouting report

• • Scouting report
• Matchup: Mount St. Mary's (16-14) vs. Robert Morris (26-6), 3 p.m. today, Northeast Conference tournament semifinal, Sewall Center, Moon.
• TV, Radio, Internet: Fox Sports Net Pittsburgh, WPTT-AM (1360), www.sports.yahoo.com/.
• Mount St. Mary's: In past 11 games, only NEC leaders Robert Morris (twice) and Wagner (once) have beaten The Mount. ... Fifth-leading scorer Jean Cajou topped The Mount with 20 points in 80-70, quarterfinal victory vs. Quinnipiac. .... Jeremy Goode and Chris Vann are 1-2 punch leading team with 14 and 15 ppg.
• Robert Morris: Owns a 19-23 all-time record against The Mount, but has won five of past six meetings.
• Hidden stat: Robert Morris last won an NEC semifinal at home, or anywhere, in 2000, when it defeated The Mount, 80-61. Colonials are 1-4 in semifinals since winning tournament in 1992.

---

Win today, and the Colonials get on ESPN2 Wednesday in the championship game.

Win Wednesday, and they get, as Tony Lee explained, a ticket to the Big Dance.

Yet that's getting ahead of the date at hand against the rugged Mount (16-14). "We're trying to take it game by game," added Lee, the conference player of the year and the man of the hour Thursday night. When the home side struggles against Monmouth's losingest team in that school's half-century of basketball history, as Robert Morris (26-6) did, it seems best to further narrow that focus.

It wasn't as if the Colonials were overlooking depleted Monmouth (7-24). It wasn't as if they were nervous.

"We were doing silly things with the basketball," Rice said without having to mention the seven turnovers in as many minutes, the seven consecutive missed shots, the nearly nine minutes without a field goal -- all in the first half. "We weren't playing with a purpose."

These Colonials rely more on defense than offense, though. Rice, their first-year coach, kept preaching that.

"Our defense has been winning games for us all year. It's not our offense," Lee said. "We're not out there scoring 100 points a game. Hopefully, we can continue playing defense at a high level."

"That's something coach Rice drives in our head, defense wins games and wins championships," added guard Jimmy Langhurst, who tied Lee with a team-high 15 points.

The two of them got the Colonials settled. Early in the second half, Langhurst made a couple of 3-pointers that helped Robert Morris retain a lead it first grabbed in the final 10.8 seconds of the first half. Then, with the home side nursing a 40-38 lead in front of the second-biggest Sewall Center crowd of the season at 2,549, Lee illustrated why he was handed the conference's highest award in a three-minute pregame ceremony.

Lee scored 10 of Robert Morris' next 13 points, and the Colonials responded with seven unanswered points for a 60-44 lead that effectively sealed the quarterfinal outcome.

"He's the player of the year in our conference, and it shows," Langhurst said. "Just his little spark like that, it got us started."

Ten of 28 field-goal tries in a second half hardly constitutes a groove. Same for 17 of 51 overall. A.J. Jackson of Monessen scored six points, his fewest in 49 games. Jeremy Chappell scored seven, his second-lowest total this season. Perhaps it was a good thing for Jackson and Chappell, who average a team-leading 14 and 14.8 points per game, respectively, that the five players off the bench combined for 15 points, 15 rebounds and an energy boost.

"There's always concern when you shoot 33 percent," said Rice, who before the game was handed the conference coach-of-the-year award named after longtime Mount St. Mary's coach Jim Phelan. "You can't shoot that badly and win in conference tournaments, especially semifinals."