Photo courtesy Robert Morris University Mike Iuzzolino gets a piece of the net after Robert Morris won the Northeast Conference title on Tuesday over Saint Francis.

Twenty-nine years ago, Mike Iuzzolino led Saint Francis to its greatest achievement of the modern basketball era, reaching the NCAA Tournament.

Five days ago, Iuzzolino, now a Robert Morris assistant coach, helped deny Saint Francis a second NCAA berth when his Colonials beat the Red Flash in the Northeast Conference Tournament championship game, 77-67.

The most obvious question for Iuzzolino is whether he feels a little bittersweet about being part of a team that prevented his alma mater from achieving a historic feat.

His answer?

“No, not at all,” Iuzzolino, an Altoona native, said Saturday by phone.

There was no animosity in his reply.

Just practicality.

“I’ll tell you why,” Iuzzolino continued. “I don’t mean this in a negative way. But I’ve always been a big believer and preached to our players, ‘Be where your feet are.’

“My feet were down on the Robert Morris bench. My only focus was not about Saint Francis, it was about helping Robert Morris win. It could have been anybody down there (on the other team).”

That’s just the way it is in sports. Players and coaches have ties all over the place, but once they’re somewhere else, they can’t afford to be overly sentimental about previous stops.

Even Mike Iuzzolino, who is as much associated with Saint Francis basketball around here as anyone because he’s a local guy, had a legendary career there and led the school to its only NCAA Tournament appearance.

Iuzzolino did acknowledge he’s sympathetic toward some of the current members of the Red Flash, including the team’s stars, Isaiah Blackmon and Keith Braxton.

“You do feel bad for guys like Blackmon and Braxton, who have had unbelievable careers,” Iuzzolino said. “I even told Isaiah that (personally).

“It just goes to show how hard it is to get to the tournament from a one-bid league. They had two (NEC) players of the year on their team, so you do feel for them in that regard.”

You also have to feel for Iuzzolino’s Robert Morris team, one of the 68 teams that earned a trip to the NCAA Tournament but was denied a chance to play because coronavirus concerns shut down the event.

Colonials head coach Andy Toole and his staff met with the players Friday to discuss the tourney being canceled. Iuzzolino said the focus of that meeting wasn’t about being disappointed. Quite the contrary, in fact.

“We focused on the positive of we got to play in a championship game,” Iuzzolino said. “We got the experience of playing a championship game in front of 4,000 people at home.”

For most teams around the country, they were denied those opportunities because their conference tournaments were canceled.

“We focused on the positives of you won your tournament, you’re in (the field of 68). Nobody can take away Tuesday night for you, that excitement. … You can’t do anything about the disappointment they are feeling about not playing in the NCAA Tournament, but nobody can take away Tuesday night and what they got to experience.

“You could see the smiles on the guys’ faces because they still had that feeling of Tuesday night. You could see them reliving it in their minds.”

Iuzzolino was denied a chance to actually appear in the NCAA Tournament for the third time in his career. He led the Red Flash there as a player in 1991 (losing to Arizona in the first round) and was an assistant coach at New Mexico when the Lobos went dancing in 2014 (losing to Stanford in the first round).

“For a coach, it’s not about you getting back,” he said. “It’s about your players going. That’s always been the focus for me. It’s not about me going to the tournament. It’s about helping our players go.

“I know what a great experience that is. There’s no better feeling for a young player than hearing their name called on Selection Sunday.”

Iuzzolino, now 52 years old, is the senior assistant coach on Toole’s staff at Robert Morris. To say that Iuzzolino has paid his dues in the coaching ranks would be an understatement.

Following his successful professional playing career — first for two years in the NBA with the Dallas Mavericks and then 10 years overseas — he wanted to get into coaching but found fewer options than he expected.

Iuzzolino had to go the unusual route of becoming an assistant coach in women’s college basketball, first at Duquesne from 2005-07 and then for one season at George Mason.

He just didn’t have the connections in the coaching profession to call upon for a job in men’s basketball at the time, so he had to do whatever it took to get his foot in the door.

His first job in men’s college basketball came at Division III Saint Vincent College in Latrobe in 2008, and he spent four years there. His head coach at Saint Francis, Jim Baron, was at Canisius in 2012 and hired Iuzzolino to be the director of basketball operations.

Iuzzolino then spent one year as an assistant at New Mexico and went back to Canisius for two years as an assistant under Baron before landing at Robert Morris in 2016.

When you consider all the stops he’s made as a player and assistant coach, it’s easy to understand how Iuzzolino came up with his motto of “be where your feet are.”

His feet have been at Robert Morris now for four seasons, and this was his first year as the senior assistant on the staff. Iuzzolino has built a strong bond with Toole during his time with the Colonials, and there’s a great deal of trust between the head coach and his top assistant.

“I feel really good about the fact that the past four years I’ve been with Andy,” Iuzzolino said. “It gives me great satisfaction that he trusts me, he values my opinion and the fact that we’ve built it up.

“We dealt with the transfers and different things. To get to this point is very satisfying for me because, to do it with Andy, he’s such a great guy to work for.”

Iuzzolino calls himself lucky to have worked for two mentors in Baron and Toole.

“I couldn’t be more blessed to have worked for those guys,” he said.

At this stage, after working so hard for many years to become the best coach he can be, Iuzzolino said he feels like he’s made one breakthrough.

“This is probably the first time this year that I actually feel like I could be a head coach,” he said. “I have confidence in it.

“A lot of it is I started to understand the importance of building culture within the team. A lot of that goes back to learning from Andy. You think you know all that stuff as a player, but you don’t realize realize what all goes into it.”