DENVER – The situation couldn't have been too much worse.
 
Lyric Hebert (Arvada, Colo./Ralston Valley) had just been called for a foot fault on a serve. MSU Denver coach Jenny Glenn argued the call to no avail, and it gave Regis a set point.
 
Trailing 24-21 in the fourth, Metropolitan State University of Denver had reached its lowest point of the night.
 
Despite opening the pressure-packed match with two of their best sets of the season, the Roadrunners were now facing the near certainty of being forced to play a fifth set. Against a team with the momentum. And against a team that had already won a five-set match against them on the same Auraria Event Center court back in September.
 
But we did say the fifth set was only near certainty, right?
 
Because the Roadrunners had other ideas.
 
A high-flying kill by Kayla White (Montgomery, Ala./Montgomery Academy): 24-22.
 
Another clutch kill by Santaisha Sturges (Parker, Colo./Regis Jesuit): 24-23.
 
Attack error by Regis: 24-24.
 
Attack error by Regis, MSU Denver leads 25-24, and it's match point.
 
Then Taylor Duryea (Logan, Utah/Sky View) found the floor with a cross-court kill to end it.
 
Seriously?
 
Suddenly the Roadrunners were running and jumping and shrieking.
 
Their emotions had gone from base camp to the summit in a matter of seconds.
 
The 3-1 win (25-16, 25-20, 19-25, 26-24) over the Rangers in the first round of the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference tournament kept MSU Denver's season alive, buoyed its hopes for an RMAC tournament title, and maybe – just maybe – was enough to get them into the NCAA Division II tournament for a 19^th consecutive season.
 
Somewhere in that low moment, with the season possibly slipping away, the Roadrunners reached deep and pulled everything back together.
 
"At the beginning of the year, whenever I argued a call, we'd lose the next three or four points," Glenn said. "We talked a lot about that – guys I'm battling for us.
 
"I think they took that and they got feisty with it. Instead of being passive, they got kind of angry and we able to just finish it – which was awesome."
 
Really, the comeback started while Glenn was still stating her case with one official, and another official was explaining the call to the respective captains. The Roadrunners on the floor circled the wagons.
 
"We just brought it in, looked at each other, and said, 'We are winning this point,' regardless of what the call is," outside hitter Taylor Duryea (Logan, Utah/Sky View) said. "That's a thing for us. If we fight for a call our determination is at an all-time high."
 
Sturges, a captain, joined the huddle after the call was confirmed.
 
"We just kept saying, 'We're winning this set, we're winning this set,'" Sturges said.
 
Sure enough, somehow, they did.
 
Now fourth-seeded MSU Denver (20-8), which has extended its streak of 20-win seasons to six, gets another chance Friday against top-seeded Colorado School of Mines (23-4) in a 7 p.m. RMAC semifinal match. Mines won the regular-season meeting in four sets, after the Roadrunners had won the opening set.
 
Meanwhile, Regis (19-10) has been clinging to what appears to be the final at-large spot – barring upsets – for the South Central Regional. But despite winning 2 of 3 against the Roadrunners this year, that could change and MSU Denver may be able to sneak into the field and bump Regis out.
 
But those chances appeared suspect when the Roadrunners were trying to overcome a call they didn't agree with.
 
They had to rally together, and rally around Hebert.
 
"That would rattle anybody in that situation," Duryea said. "But we said, 'We win this point, we do it for each other and we do it together.' We got the next point and we were going to roll. We were so determined not to go to a fifth set."
 
Said Hebert: "We just let the play go. You can't do anything about it. So now it's just, we pass a ball, we set a ball, we get a kill and we keep moving forward."
 
Sturges, the second-team All-American who was named first-team All-RMAC for the second time earlier Tuesday, had 15 kills – her highest total since the Sept. 15 match with Regis and breaking a five-match streak in which she hadn't reached double figures.
 
Tuesday she had six kills in the fourth set alone.
 
"Jenny had a talk with me this week and told me that I know what I need to do to put the ball away," Sturges said. "She asked me if I was confident, and I said, 'Yes, I'm confident.' That just stuck with me, because I knew I hadn't been performing like I had at the beginning of the season."
 
Sturges also had 15 digs for her ninth double-double of the season and 41^st of her career, and she matched a career-high with three service aces.
 
"Santaisha played one of the best matches she's had in a while, and that was huge," Glenn said.
 
Duryea, also first-team All-RMAC, had 15 kills and 16 digs for her 12^th double-double of the season. That included her cross-court game-ender.
 
"In any situation I want to get set, and in that (clutch) situation I always want my setters to get it to me," Duryea said. "That's a corner that we knew, matchup-wise, was going to be good for us. In my head I thought, 'I want this ball and I'm going to put it away.'"
 
White had half of her 10 kills in the fourth set while hitting a career-best .389.
 
Jessa Megenhardt (Berthoud, Colo./Berthoud) set 24 assists, while Mikaela Kubiak (Kalamazoo, Mich./Portage Central) added 20 assists and a career-best 16 digs.
 
"We were very well-prepared," Glenn said. "All of our girls have been studying them a lot. They've been motivated.
 
"We had a chip on our shoulder. We wanted to win this match really bad."
 
The dramatic finish overshadowed a strong start in which the Roadrunners played perhaps their best first two sets of the season. They rose to the occasion when it mattered most.
 
"We had our foot on the gas those first two sets, and we made them uncomfortable," Duryea said. "That got us confident. We were determined and we played clean."
 
And, when it was over, there were equal parts joy and relief.
 
"We play as hard as we can to play another day," Duryea said. "We knew that tonight, if we didn't win, we were done. It was such a celebration because we had come back from such a point deficit after a really tough call. The gym was on fire tonight, and that got us going."