Mike Rice joked aloud last night that he was prepared to yank away Tony Lee's player of the year award, handed out amid a three-minute pregame ceremony, because of the lackluster way his star guard played for nearly all of the quarterfinal that followed.

Lee snapped right back that he almost stripped Rice of his coach of the year award.

They were only kidding on a night when the top-seeded Colonials lost nothing, most important of all their Northeast Conference quarterfinal date with eighth-seeded Monmouth, in an ugly, 64-50 victory before 2,549 patrons at the Sewall Center.

"We found a way," Rice said afterward. "It was a hard-fought, first-round college tournament game. First-round games are going to be like this. They aren't going to be a thing of beauty."

This homely home victory -- a rarity at Robert Morris nonetheless -- secured for the regular-season NEC champions a 3 p.m. home semifinal Sunday on FSN Pittsburgh against fourth-seeded Mount St. Mary's (16-14), an 80-70 winner last night against Quinnipiac.

For Robert Morris (26-6), whose 14-game winning streak is tied with Cornell for the second-longest streak behind Davidson's 19 in a row, a second-half surge secured what could've been yet another home-court disappointment at tournament time. The Colonials had lost four of their previous five NEC tournament games at the Sewall Center, had lost eight of 13 first-round games (including seven at home) since last winning the league championship in 1992 and had lost three consecutive March games to Monmouth.

Monmouth (7-24), a perennial NEC contender and champion the past decade, came to Robert Morris with a different team this time -- missing two key players and compiling the most losses in its half-century of basketball. Its matchup zone caused problems for Robert Morris through much of the first half, in which the Colonials trailed until the final 10.8 seconds.

In the second half, Rice induced the Colonials into maintaining defensive pressure, which limited Monmouth to 31 percent shooting, and patiently waiting for their offensive parts -- namely A.J. Jackson of Monessen, Jeremy Chappell and Lee -- to start humming.

Jackson (1 for 5 from the field) and Chappell (2 for 10) never quite warmed up, and Lee didn't get it going until six minutes remained. But it was then that Lee restored order to Robert Morris, the Sewall Center and the NEC postseason, where all the higher seeds won last night.

Lee scored 10 of 13 Colonials points in a three-minute stretch, single-handedly prying open a tenuous 40-38 Robert Morris lead.

The plug of a guard from Charlestown, Mass., was just 1 for 5 from the field before making both of his final 3-point tries, another basket and two free throws in quick succession.

"There's always concern when you shoot 33 percent," Rice said of his team. "Somebody finally made a shot.

"It was like a breath of fresh air, when we finally hit a shot and finally moved the basketball. Tony always wants to make plays."

It was about time for him to do it, too, Lee told himself at the time: "Now it's either win or go home. I don't want to leave on that kind of note. It seemed like I was the open person."

Fellow guard Jimmy Langhurst, who hit a couple of key 3-pointers in the second half, tied Lee with a team-high 15 points.

Yaniv Simpson topped Monmouth with 18.

Monmouth coach Dave Calloway sounded as if he expected his depleted, seven-man rotation to falter eventually: "At some point in time, adversity hits. Someone on the other team makes a play, and we don't.

"And the guy on the other team that made a play was the player of the year."