GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. – The Metropolitan State University of Denver baseball team was eliminated from the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference tournament on Friday, bowing out after a 10-3 loss to No. 22/29 Colorado School of Mines.

The No. 5 seed Roadrunners (28-24) needed a second RMAC tournament win against the No. 2 seed Orediggers (38-12) to stay alive, but Wednesday's late-inning magic unfortunately was not to be repeated on Friday.

"We just didn't pitch very well," MSU Denver coach Ryan Strain said Friday. "It starts to trickle down to the offense. It's happened to a hundred baseball teams, where if you're not pitching, you're trying to do too much offensively."

MSU Denver fell behind 6-0 thanks to three Mines homers in the first inning, and that deficit proved insurmountable as the Orediggers added single runs in the sixth through ninth innings while MSU Denver scored one in the fourth and two in the ninth.

The ninth-inning rally was too little, too late for MSU Denver, who totaled five hits while Mines had 12.

"We just didn't have enough in the tank down the stretch," Strain said.

Carter Akerfelds got the start for the Roadrunners, but was relieved by Nick Ulmer in the first inning after back-to-back homers followed by a double made it 4-0 Mines. Another homer off Ulmer made it 5-0, while the sixth run scored on a wild pitch.

Logan Soole stayed hot with a fourth-inning home run, his 15^th of the season, to trim the deficit to 6-1.

An error, a homer, an RBI double and an RBI single steadily increased Mines' lead to 10-1 as the Orediggers tacked on insurance runs in the sixth through ninth innings.

MSU Denver managed just one hit after Soole's homer until the ninth inning, when Chase Anderson walked to lead off the inning before Matt Malkin extended his single-season program record with his 25^th roundtripper of the season to bring MSU Denver within 10-3.

Malkin was 2-for-4 in the game with a run and two RBIs. Soole, Jake Kistaitis and Draven Adame had MSU Denver's three other hits in the contest.

Drew Hill tossed a complete game for the Orediggers, who lost to the Roadrunners 10-9 in an opening-round thriller on Wednesday but advanced to play No. 3 seed Dixie State with Friday's defeat of MSU Denver. The winner of that game will take on top seed Colorado Mesa to vie for the RMAC tournament title.

The Mavericks have no losses in the tournament so far, meaning that a two-game championship series is in order if Mines or Dixie State wins the first game against Colorado Mesa.
The Roadrunners are now 28-24, a six-win improvement on last season's total.