DENVER – All good things come to an end.
Regis scored five runs in the final three innings Monday to overcome a 4-1 deficit and salvage the finale of a four-game series with Metropolitan State University of Denver, snapping the Roadrunners' school-record winning streak at 14 games with a 6-4 victory.
"We deserved to lose today," MSU Denver coach
Ryan Strain said. "They got more hits than we did (11-6). They executed bunts when they needed them. They got big hits when they needed them. And we made some mistakes. We got up 4-1 and I thought we relaxed a little bit, and we gave them the game."
Still, in not losing for over three weeks, the Roadrunners have put themselves in solid position with a 20-8 overall record and a 13-3 mark in Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference play that has given them a share of first place with national No. 1 Colorado Mesa.
"The season is going to have ups and downs," MSU Denver catcher
Matt Malkin (Broomfield, Colo./Monarch) said. "Today was one of the downs. The past few days have been a little iffy here and there. We've just got to keep grinding and get back to the way we play."
Regis (9-20, 4-12) played well all weekend, with only one of the games decided by more than three runs.
The Rangers took the early lead Monday, but MSU Denver scored two in the fourth to take the lead, then added on in the sixth with an RBI triple by
Zach Walsh (Austin, Texas/Vista Ridge) and a safety squeeze bunt by
Ty Lightley (Littleton, Colo./Dakota Ridge).
"We came out slow today and we lost," said designated hitter
Draven Adame (Lamar, Colo./Lamar), one of the heroes in a come-from-behind walkoff win in the second game of Sunday's doubleheader. "We're not good enough to roll the ball out and win. We're going to have to come out on fire every day, practice harder, and when we play we have to come out hard. We want to try to get back to where we were a couple of weeks ago."
Chase Anderson (Littleton, Colo./Columbine), the hero of Saturday's series opener with a tiebreaking seventh-inning homer, had two of the Roadrunners' six hits. Anderson now has eight straight multi-hit games, with the 17-for-36 (.472) stretch lifting his average to .376 for the season. He is also riding a 16-game hitting streak (34-for-69, .493) that has added 168 points to his average.
Still, the Roadrunners were disappointed with how this series ended.
They'll take Tuesday off before returning to practice Wednesday in preparation for a weekend series at Colorado Christian (8-21, 3-13). Colorado Christian beat the Roadrunners 7-0 in a non-conference game on Feb. 28.
"Wednesday is going to be one of our hardest practices," Strain said. "We need to get locked in again. It's hard to learn to play hard all the time when you keep winning. We talked about it ad nauseum over the last couple of weeks. We told them we needed to be ready to go, but we just weren't."
