DENVER – Not since Michael Bahl was a sophomore searching for playing time has MSU Denver had a shooting night like Saturday.
 
The Roadrunners knocked down 13 of 18 attempts from 3-point range, making a serious run at the school record for single-game long-distance accuracy, and earned an 82-73 victory over Chadron State.
 
"I don't think we can shoot like that every night, but I do think we're a 40 to 45 percent shooting team from 3 – I really do," said Bahl, MSU Denver's third-year head coach. "So I'm not surprised by it."
 
MSU Denver shot 72.2 percent from 3, the best for the program in 177 games dating to a 9-for-11 performance (81.8 percent) on Jan. 18, 2014, at Fort Lewis. The school record of 82.4 percent (14 of 17) came in a regional championship victory over South Dakota on March 15, 2005.
 
Bahl, later the Division II national leader in 3-point percentage, didn't play in that game, but he does remember teammate Drew Williamson going 6 for 6 from 3 that night, one of three players in program history to do so (the others were C.J. Arellano in 1995 and Mike Morse, also in 2005).
 
Saturday, Druce Asah nearly joined them. Asah made his first five triples before a late miss forced him to settle for 5 for 6 from deep.

"It was good to see guys make some shots, especially Druce, because we need him to do what he does best," Bahl said. "Everyone else feeds off that."
 
Asah, who shot 40.7 percent from 3 last season, was shooting 34.4 percent this season before breaking out. He's now up to a more representative 38.6 percent.
 
"We're a good-shooting team," Asah said. "That kind of performance is something we expect."
 
Mitch Lombard hit 3 of 4 from long distance, Maris Colton was 2 for 3, Garrett Carter and Elijah Straughter each knocked down his only try, and Christian Wilson-Poole was 1 for 2.
 
MSU Denver had been shooting just 31.5 percent from 3, but bumped it up to 34.4 percent after Saturday.
 
"We know we're a great shooting team," Carter said. "We don't shy away from shots. We work on shooting all the time. The numbers may not show it, but we know that we can shoot the ball."
 
Asah hit two 3s in the first five minutes, and the Roadrunners rarely looked back.
 
"I felt like they were basing their game plan on the past few games, so they weren't playing us real close on the 3-point line because we haven't been shooting well," said Asah, who twice tied the school record of nine made 3s in a game last year. "So we used that to our advantage. We were getting a lot of wide-open looks, and we were knocking them down."
 
This is what it looks like when MSU Denver (6-5 overall, 2-3 Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference) is clicking on all offensive cylinders, as teams have to decide if they will take away the paint or run shooters off the 3-point line. Chadron State (2-9, 1-4) tried to take away the lane, and MSU Denver was on target.
 
"We have a really athletic team with really good drivers, and I think teams are going to back up – especially based on our 3-point percentage so far," Lombard said. "They're going to try to take the drive away. We just talked all week about having the confidence in our shooting.
 
"We know we have one of the best defenses in the league and that's always going to keep us in the game. So we definitely needed to pick up our shooting if we're going to win some of these games.
 
Lombard, the starting point guard, was given plenty of space beyond the arc, even though he was shooting 46.2 percent from long distance. He's at 52.9 percent now.
 
"I've only been guarded like that maybe twice in my whole life," he said. "Usually teams play straight up. At first I didn't really know what to do, and you don't want to come down with no passes and shoot. So I tried to work it around a little bit and then, when I got the ball back, I would look to shoot it."
 
Bahl said the team's Friday routine – after practicing basketball all week, Friday was reserved for a surprise game of whiffeball before the team's Christmas Party – helped his team relax.
 
"It was good to see the guys smile," Bahl said. "Shooting is so finicky. It's just feeling good, being happy and being satisfied as a human being. We wanted to take a holistic approach."
 
Asah finished with 19 points and grabbed six rebounds. Lombard had 15 points and blocked two shots.
 
Carter was steady with 13 points on 5 of 6 shooting, and he added five rebounds and five assists.
 
"I think it was his best game of the year," Bahl said. "He stayed within himself and didn't try to do too much. I'm very pleased with him. He's starting to get back into his rhythm and that's what we want him to do."
 
Colton and Kendall McIntosh each had nine points and six rebounds as the Roadrunners held Chadron State to 40.8 percent shooting, including 29.0 percent in the first half.
"We're so excited to get this win," Lombard said. "We've lost three league games by a total of four points, so we feel like we're right there. We've just got to keep getting better in January and February. There's a lot of conference left to play."
 
The Roadrunners are off until Jan. 3, when they travel to Fort Lewis to open a weekend road trip that also includes a game at Adams State on Jan. 4.
 
"This a big win," Carter said. "We're going into break, and we didn't want to go into break sitting on a loss. We put an emphasis on this game. We needed this game. We knew how important it was."