DENVER – MSU Denver returns home for men's basketball home games against Dixie State on Friday and Westminster on Saturday looking to get back on track.
Dixie State, ranked No. 19 in both NCAA Division II national polls, is 11-2 overall and is alone in first place in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference at 6-1. Westminster is 8-5 overall and 3-4 in the RMAC. Tip-off at the Auraria Event Center is 7:30 p.m. Friday and 7 p.m. Saturday. The Saturday game against Westminster will be televised locally on Channel 20.
"We play two really good teams this weekend," Metropolitan State University of Denver coach
Michael Bahl said. "Dixie State is at the top of the conference for a reason. They're going Division I, and they have some players on their roster who came in knowing they were going to Division I, so they are built a little differently.
"But it's a great opportunity ahead of us, and we're looking forward to the opportunity to do it together and to compete together."
MSU Denver is 6-7 overall and 2-5 in the RMAC. The Roadrunners' first three league losses were by a total of four points, but they are coming off road losses of 78-65 at Fort Lewis and 91-73 at Adams State.
"This is a huge weekend, especially being back at home," point guard
Mitch Lombard said. "We've got to protect home court as much as we can. We've got eight home games left. This weekend is a chance for us to turn our season around."
Lombard said he and his teammates have bounced back well from a frustrating weekend.
"I think we're doing well," he said. "Obviously you never want to lose at all, let alone by the margin we did. But we felt like we played pretty well in the first half of both games. We were winning in both games towards the end of the half. We kind of had a breakdown in the second half of both games, but we feel like it's fixable and we have more than half our season left to correct it."
The Roadrunners led 22-21 with six minutes left in the first half against Fort Lewis and trailed just 25-23 with two minutes left before the Skyhawks bumped the lead to seven at halftime. Against Adams State, the Roadrunners were up 35-32 with three minutes left in the first half but fell behind by eight at halftime and weren't able to recover after the break.
Bahl said the team is working on developing relationships off the floor so that when tough times arise on the court everyone is on the same page.
"It's trust and social cohesion," Bahl said. "It's got nothing to do with what happens on the basketball floor. In times of adversity, you've got to be able to know that, 'Hey, this coach has my back, this player has my back,' that we're in this together. And it's easier said than done. That's something that special teams have, and it's something that I think we can attain."
