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LM grad Robbins enjoying success as a senior

02/03/2013, 1:07am EST

By Josh Verlin

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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This season, Greg Robbins got a little bit of a gift from the scheduling gods.

The University of Richmond senior forward and his Spider teammates play all three of the Atlantic 10’s Philadelphia schools--St. Joseph’s, La Salle and Temple--on the road this season, which suits the Wynnewood native just fine.

“It’s awesome,” he told CoBL after the second of those three games, at Temple on Jan. 30. “I’m very lucky that it turned out that we got to play here three times. I’m very fortunate and happy about that.”

The former high school star is finally starting games for the first time since getting to college, averaging 28.7 minutes, 7.0 points and 3.0 rebounds per contest as a versatile wing who’s played every position on the court at some point this season while starting all 23 games.

“He rebounds, he scores inside, he can shoot a little bit, so I really loved his versatility,” Mooney said. “He has a great sense for the game, he’s played a ton of different positions and he’s contributed to us in a million ways.”

A 2009 graduate of Lower Merion High School, Robbins won a state championship with the Aces as a freshman starter back in 2006. A three time All-State honoree, he committed to Richmond and head coach Chris Mooney, an Archbishop Ryan grad, in no small part because of Mooney’s connection to the city.

“I think Coach Mooney’s always trying to preach a sense of toughness,” Robbins said. “And whatever you want to say about Philadelphia, it’s a tough city.”

Mooney has gotten a number of area players down to Richmond, including a player who would end up being one of Robbins’ closest friends--Springfield (Delco) graduate Dan Geriot, a 6-9 forward who would finish his Richmond career with over 1300 points, good enough for 17th on the schools' all-time scoring list. The first time they met, however, left Geriot with a sour taste in his mouth.

“I’ve known Greg since he was a freshman at Lower Merion and I was a senior at Springfield, and he hit three 3s in the last two minutes of our first game against each other. They were down 15 points and he brought them back to win...so I started my hatred for Greg,” Geriot said with a laugh.

Two years later, when Geriot was sitting out his junior season with a torn ACL, he reconnected with Robbins at a skills camp hosted in Richmond where the high schooler’s strong performance caught the eye of Mooney and his staff.

“He was playing great and we felt we might have a shot of getting him so I started to just talk to him at Elite Camp and got to know him a little bit better through that,” Geriot, now an assistant coach at Princeton, told CoBL by phone on Thursday. “Coming back home in the summers, I’d see him, and we kinda started our relationship there, and it just grew.

“When he committed to Richmond, that signaled to me that we obviously were probably going to be very good friends, and when he got to Richmond I started hanging out with him a lot and we became really good friends, which has been great.”

“Being from the area, I thought we had a good chance,” Mooney said about his recruitment of Robbins. “I just thought when we recruited him we were getting a really versatile player who’s a great kid and that’s definitely proven to be true.”

Robbins’ first two years of collegiate ball were not as successful personally, as he averaged around five minutes per game between his freshman and sophomore seasons, but he got a chance to be part of two NCAA tournament teams, including a trip to the Sweet 16 back in 2011.

The work started to pay off in his junior season, when he saw his minutes jump up to over 16 per game as he played every game for the first time in his collegiate career.

“He’s a guy who didn’t play a lot his first two years, and with transferring being rampant in college basketball, he didn’t just transfer, he stuck with it,” Mooney said after the Temple game. “He likes the school, he likes the program, and he has been an incredible factor for us this year.”

Robbins has broken the double-digit barrier in eight games this season though he hasn't quite gotten to his career high of 15 points, set last season in a win over Rutgers. His play has been especially crucial lately as the Spiders try to survive without starting forward Derrick Thomas, out for the last nine games with a sprained ankle.

Now, just a few months from graduation with a degree in political science, Robbins--who said he’s interested in coaching at some point after college--is clearly enjoying seeing all the hard work he’s put in pay off.

“It’s been awesome,” Robbins said about his senior year. “College basketball’s like nothing else in the world. To start here, at a special program like Richmond, it’s awesome.

“I just want to take it one game at a time, obviously hope for the best.”