Andy Toole’s quarter-century in college basketball is reflected in six— soon to be seven — NCAA Tournament appearances, championships won in three conferences as a player and coach and, most importantly, the impact he makes on young people.
Yet stories involving Robert Morris’ coach go beyond the game.
This week, four men talked to TribLive and painted a verbal portrait of what working with, playing for and coaching the coach is really like.
The dreaded pandemic
Mike Iuzzolino could sense the euphoria of Robert Morris defeating St. Francis in the 2020 Northeast Conference title game and qualifying for the NCAA Tournament was fresh in the minds of the Colonials’ players when Toole entered the room. The next few moments, however, turned out to be among the most difficult in Toole’s 15 years as RMU’s head coach. It was his job to tell the players there would be no tournament because of the covid-19 pandemic.
“There was such emotion and pain in his voice, having to tell those kids there is going to be no tournament,” said Iuzzolino, at the time a Robert Morris assistant. “But there was such a professionalism, a positive outlook on how (players) are going to move on in life after this. It showed the coaching side, the compassion side and the professionalism side that you can’t really explain. As difficult as it was, it was a masterful speech by him that day.
“He also, in his way, understood there was a lot more going on than basketball and athletics at that time. He fully understood that and embraced that.”
Five years later, the players are gone, but Toole has endured the test of time and will lead the 15th-seeded Colonials into the NCAA Tournament at 12:40 p.m. Friday against Alabama in Cleveland’s Rocket Arena.
Family first
A bit more than a year ago, Iuzzolino had a conflict between job and family.
Saint Vincent, with Iuzzolino’s son Michael in the starting lineup, was getting ready to play Geneva in the Presidents’ Athletic Conference championship game. That’s the good news, but Robert Morris was recruiting a point guard whose game was scheduled for the same day.
Iuzzolino was the point man in the player’s recruitment, and a sense of duty told him he must choose the recruiting trip.
“(Toole) said, ‘Are you going up to see the point guard?’ ”
“I said, ‘Yeah.’ ”
Wrong answer.
“He told me, ‘If you go to that game and not your son’s championship game, you might be fired.’ I went to my son’s game.”
Actually, the story has a happy ending. The point guard went elsewhere, but Robert Morris signed Kam Woods to the same position and he leads the team in scoring this season.
Iuzzolino said after games at UPMC Events Center, Toole’s office is a gathering place for family, friends and their kids.
“He’s such an unbelievable people person first. He incorporates everybody. If you can believe this, those kids are up in the office, win or lose. My family came to every game. His young boys were there.”
After a professional career in the NBA, CBA and overseas, Iuzzolino was an assistant at Canisius and New Mexico before spending eight years on Toole’s staff. He left last year to take the head coaching position at Sewickley Academy. Saturday, the day after Robert Morris plays Alabama, Sewickley Academy plays in the PIAA Class 2A semifinals against Greensburg Central Catholic.
“It probably was one of the hardest decisions I had to make basketball-wise, besides the day I decided I was retiring from playing,” Iuzzolino said. “Because I have so much respect for the university, so much respect for him.
“I loved working with Andy. It was so much fun for me because he gave you so much freedom to allow you to do whatever was necessary to help the team win.”
‘The closer’
Iuzzolino helped recruit several key players who have led the Colonials into the NCAA Tournament, including Horizon League Player of the Year Alvaro Folgueiras, Amarion Dickerson, Ismael Plett and Josh Omojafo. But he said recruiting was a team effort, and Toole is “the closer.”
“He connects with the players personally, and the other thing is he sets such a high standard and challenges them all the time to constantly get better. And he works with them. He’s a guy who goes on the floor with guys and shoots with guys. He’s getting his hands dirty every day. You don’t see a lot of head coaches rebounding for guys and shooting with guys. He’s a hands-on guy.”
Pain? What pain?
Fran Dunphy, who recently retired after 33 seasons coaching Philadelphia schools Penn, Temple and LaSalle, first met Toole in 2000 when the 6-foot-4, 165-pound guard transferred from Elon to Penn.
After Toole sat out a season in accordance with transfer rules of the day, he immediately became an impact player for a team that won Ivy League championships in 2002 and 2003.
But Dunphy doesn’t want you to forget a December game against Villanova that resonates more than any other.
“One of my favorite Toole stories,” Dunphy said, “is him playing with a fractured foot, us winning the game and him getting a pin in his foot the next day and out for not a real long period of time and coming back to finish the season.
“He fought through the injury with the aid of his doctors. He said, ‘I’ll be OK.’ That kind of spirit was already in him. He’s a special guy. He was a leader from day one.”
Dunphy said Toole exhibited impressive self-awareness as a player, but he also had ideas to improve everyone’s game.
“He knew exactly what his game was all about. He could score, but he could also distribute. He felt the game differently than most. He had a sense for the game that is really coach-like even when he was playing.”
Looking back, Dunphy said he wished he would have sought Toole’s ideas more often than he did.
“I almost wish I was a little older when I coached him because I would have given him more responsibility if I was coaching him today, rather than 25 years ago,” he said. “I was in (coaching) for 10 years when he started with us. If I had been in it for 20 years, I would have called on him even more than I did, and I think I called on him for his ideas probably more than most of the guys that I coached. I would have done it more if I had been a little more secure with who I was.”
Dunphy called Toole “a pretty smart, understanding-of-life guy.”
“I don’t think he needed my counsel. I probably needed his more than he needed mine.”
‘Remember the feeling’
Matty McConnell won a WPIAL championship and scored 2,018 points playing for his father, Tim, at Chartiers Valley. He started for Toole at Robert Morris for four seasons (2015-16 to 2018-19). The contrast in coaching styles was imperceptible. Both were tough. But — as the younger McConnell tells it — “in a good way.”
“Honestly, it was a super easy transition,” he said. “My dad was hard on me, and coach Toole was hard on me, as well. It wasn’t much of a shock to me because I was used to it.”
Yet there was another side to Toole, and McConnell noticed it while he was being recruited.
“I was working a side job in high school, and he even came to visit me there,” he said. “It kind of just showed how he and his coaching staff care about his players and the ones that they’re recruiting.”
That side of the coach also showed up when McConnell was on campus.
“We lost to Saint Francis,” McConnell said. “I missed a free throw down the stretch, and I was kind of hanging my head. He said, ‘Remember this feeling so you don’t have to feel this in the NEC Tournament.’
“He was there for me and showed that he really loved his players.”
A new home
Chris King laid out many goals when he was hired in 2019 to be Robert Morris’ athletic director, but chief among them was elevating athletics toward a higher level of competition than what was offered by the Northeast Conference.
But when the Colonials joined the Horizon League in 2020, they struggled under recruiting restrictions mandated by the pandemic and finished 4-15 in 2020-21.
Toole was on board with the change in conferences, stayed the course and was one of the main forces toward getting UPMC Events Center built on campus, King said. “He’s completely driven. Vision second to none.”
“Those types of things do not get done without leadership and strategic vision. Andy has done an incredible job in the way he has engaged with the community, alumni, donors, corporations. He really kind of set the tone to get this UPMC Events Center built.”
The next challenge for Toole and the administration is navigating NIL.
“We talk about it all the time. It’s an ongoing battle,” King said. “Recruitment and retention are the two biggest things that keep a coach up at night in this day and age. I think we’re going to retain a majority, if not all of (the players). Andy and I have a lot of significant fundraising to do, not just for NIL. We want to be able to sustain the success he has worked so hard for.”
Categories: Robert Morris | Sports
