A van-load of Mount St. Mary's students taunted what was left of the home crowd inside the Sewall Center in Moon yesterday.

ES-PN. ES-PN. ... Over-rated. Over-rated.

Funny, but the roughly half of the 2,061 Robert Morris patrons still in the bleachers didn't feel compelled to reply: N-I-T, N-I-T.

That appears to be the less than lovely parting gift destined for record-setting Robert Morris Sunday instead of the ultimate prize of seeing its name in the NCAA tournament brackets. Yet, after a disheartening, 83-65 loss to fourth-seeded Mount St. Mary's, the lowest remaining seed in the Northeast Conference tournament semifinals, a guaranteed bid to the second-tier National Invitation Tournament is little for the regular-season champion to shout about. It's little to put one, well, over the Moon.

"Coach told us to keep our heads up," senior A.J. Jackson said of Mike Rice. "We're going to have to come back and practice Wednesday night and prepare for the NIT."

Such a bid would be a first for the former junior college and business school that graduated to Division I status in 1976 and promptly made the NCAAs four of its first 16 seasons. It also would be the first foray into the postseason for the Colonials since Jarrett Durham's 1992 club. And, granted, it would be some kind of reward for Jackson (16 points), NEC player of the year Tony Lee (seven assists to set a school single-season record), Jeremy Chappell (20 points) and the rest of Rice's inaugural Robert Morris team, which compiled school records of 26 victories overall and 14 in a row ... until this.

Mount St. Mary's (17-14), winner of four consecutive games, finds itself on ESPN2 and in the NEC tournament championship Wednesday at Sacred Heart (18-13), a 55-49 winner against Wagner (23-8) last night.

"I kept telling my teammates, 'We can't have the same thing happen to us as last year,'" Jackson recalled of their NEC loss at home a year ago. "And it was just a repeat."

This time, Mount St. Mary's handed the Colonials their most-lopsided defeat of a remarkable season. Their 3-0 lead from the start quickly turned into a 12-3 deficit. They forged a tie at 14-14 before reserve Kelly Beidler answered with a 3-pointer and Jeremy Goode -- he of the game-high 23 points -- added another. It was like that all game.

The visitors beat the Colonials in rebounding (eight more), in shooting (54 percent to 40), in free-throw shooting (making 27 to Robert Morris' 19 attempts), in defending, in hustling, in going on runs. Or, as Rice put it, "They out-Robert-Morris-ed us. Very disappointing. We didn't put out nearly enough energy or intensity as we needed. For some reason, our whole program didn't bring it."

Meantime, Mountaineers coach Milan Brown said: "We're not going to run out and do cartwheels on the court 'cause we won a semifinal basketball game.

"That's not what we put at the top of our board [for goals] when the season started."

The same could be uttered about the NIT.