DENVER – As a member of the University of Colorado basketball team, Mitch Lombard has seen the most difficult playing environments the Pacific 12 Conference has to offer.
 
"The craziest was at Oregon," the MSU Denver point guard said. "That's the year they went to the Final Four and they were top-5 the whole year, and they had six or seven NBA players. The crowd that backed them, it was crazy.
 
"U of A (Arizona) was tough, of course. One that you wouldn't suspect is Washington State."
 
But whether it's the free throw hijinks of Arizona State fans, the historic arena at Washington or the tradition of Pauley Pavilion and UCLA, there's one thing you can always be sure of – road games are tough.
 
And that includes road games in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference.
 
"Some of these places are really tough, because they have compact gyms with a lot of fans," Lombard said. "Sometimes you feel them even more than at a big arena. The first road trip, (Colorado) Mesa and Western (Colorado) those places were really tough. But those were also two of the best road games we've had. I'm interested to see what these two places are like this weekend. I've never been to either of these, but we'll just have to get focused and ready to go."

Lombard, who led the Roadrunners to home wins last weekend over then-No. 19 Dixie State as well as Westminster, has been named Metropolitan State University of Denver's Student-Athlete of the Week after averaging 13.5 points, 5.5 rebounds and 4.0 assists. He scored 18 points against Dixie State on 8 of 9 shooting, including eight straight to cap a game-changing, 15-2 second-half run in which the Roadrunners surged to a 52-48 lead after trailing 46-37. It was the Roadrunners' first win over a ranked team since 2015.
 
"He believes in himself and he believes in his teammates and that's what makes him really good," MSU Denver coach Michael Bahl said of Lombard.
 
But now the belief of Lombard and the Roadrunners (8-7 overall, tied for eighth in the RMAC at 4-5) will be tested over the next two weekends, as they go on the road to play at CSU-Pueblo (7-8, 5-4) on Friday at 7:30 p.m. and New Mexico Highlands (10-4, 5-4) on Saturday at 7 p.m.
 
The following weekend MSU Denver travels to play Colorado School of Mines (11-5, 7-2) and UCCS (10-4, 6-3).
 
Right now the Roadrunners are 0-5 in true road games and 0-6 overall away from the Auraria Event Center.
 
Think RMAC road games aren't as tough as Pac-12 road games? Think again.
 
"Road games are road games," Bahl said. "No matter where you go, it's always hard to play on the road, whether it's Colorado Christian or the University of Utah. People think crowd size makes a difference, but it really doesn't, it's really the environment. And any time there's a different environment, it's hard to adjust."
 
MSU Denver's last road win was at CSU-Pueblo on Feb. 23 of last season, a 76-62 triumph. What's the key to breaking through again?
 
"It's more about how you handle adversity," Bahl said. "You take it one step at a time and understand that it's going to be hard. So expect it to be hard. It's not going to be perfect and you're going to have to overcome some type of adversity. If you can do that, good things will happen."
 
Lombard said the Roadrunners know what they need to do.
 
"It's mainly just focus," he said. "We know we have to double down and focus even more. And it's staying together through any adversity that happens. Our last road trip (losses at Fort Lewis and Adams State on Jan. 3 and 4), we kind of got away from that when things got tough."
 
Meanwhile, if the sound of teammates counting down from 10 to 1 is still ringing in the heads of Roadrunners this week, that's a good thing.
 
MSU Denver made both Dixie State and Westminster defend nearly all 30 seconds of the shot clock repeatedly last weekend, with teammates on the bench helping by sounding off the remaining time to those on the floor. That style of play often translates on the road, keeping the home crowd restless and disinterested and the home team frustrated and using energy.
 
"The pacing is definitely something that can help us on the road," Lombard said. "Making sure the ball is in our hands for most of the game and not rushing shots is big. You can get out and run more when you're at home, but on the road you have to make them guard and take the best possible shot that you can."
 
Said Bahl: "We definitely want to run on misses, and on makes we definitely want to be selective and make the other team guard."
 
CSU-Pueblo (second) and New Mexico Highlands (first) are the highest-scoring teams in the RMAC in league play, with averages of 82.3 points and 90.4 points per game, respectively, so slowing the pace could pay dividends.
 
"They both want to get up and down, run and score points," Bahl said. "Both are guard-dominated teams when it comes to their scoring. We're going to have to defend on the perimeter and make sure we rebound, because perimeter shots lead to long rebounds. We just have to play our game and not over-react if they make a couple of shots in a row."
 
Both of this weekend's opponents, as well as next weekend's, are teams that will also be making a return trip to the Auraria Event Center in the RMAC's unbalanced schedule.
 
Those eight games, plus home-and-away weekends with Black Hills State (10-5, 7-2) and South Dakota Mines (7-8, 4-5) mean the Roadrunners will have plenty of chances to move up in the standings with wins against teams that are currently tied or ahead of them. In other words, they have control of much of their fate.
 
"A lot of the teams ahead of us we play twice," Lombard said. "So we have a chance to make our mark if we can do what we need to do against those teams that are ahead of us. Seeing teams twice, you start to get more comfortable against them, figure out how to play against them and how to attack them. We think that's a great advantage."
 
Getting a road win here and there will be critical. It's not quite like Norman Dale taking Jimmy Chitwood and the Hickory Huskers into Hinkle Fieldhouse and checking out their surroundings, but you get the idea.
 
"The lighting is a little different, the rims are a little different," Bahl said. "Those types of things we need to know. But at the same time, it's just like in Hoosiers, the rim is 10 feet high, the free throw line is 15 feet away, and the length of the court is the same."