CHADRON, Neb. – Don't shut down the Auraria Event Center just yet. MSU Denver's season is still going.
 
The Roadrunners have qualified for the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Tournament.
 
Needing a road victory and a surprising upset elsewhere to keep its season alive, MSU Denver got both Friday night in defeating Chadron State 83-79 while Adams State upset Fort Lewis 63-57 to knock Fort Lewis out of postseason play.
 
"This is just amazing," Metropolitan State University of Denver coach Tanya Haave said.
 
MSU Denver will play at top-seeded regular-season champion Colorado Mesa, ranked 26^th nationally by the coaches and 24^th by SIDs, in a first-round matchup on Tuesday.
 
MSU Denver (13-15 overall, 12-10 RMAC) was cruising along with a 75-60 lead with 6:06 to play, but scoreboard watchers who had turned their attention elsewhere may have been startled to see that Chadron State (7-24, 5-17) put together a 17-4 run to pull within 79-77 with 33 seconds to go.
 
But Morgan Lewis made two clutch free throws with 19 seconds left and, after Chadron State made a pair of free throws with eight seconds to go, senior Leya Harvey made two more free throws with seven seconds left to provide the final margin.
 
Meanwhile, Adams State had just completed its upset for its fourth win of the season with about 30 seconds left in the MSU Denver game, so the Roadrunners new immediately that their season would continue.
 
"They're very excited," Haave said of her team. "We came out and celebrated on their home court like we had just won the conference championship. I told J.R. (Chadron State coach Janet Rymer) that we weren't being disrespectful, it was because we just found out we had made the tournament. To see our players as happy as they were was really great."
 
MSU Denver shot 49.2 percent from the field and made a season-best 91.3 percent of its free throws (21 of 23).
 
"We won the game at the free throw line," Haave said.
 
Senior Bree Wellington came within two points of her career high with 22 points while adding eight rebounds to lead MSU Denver.
 
"It was nice to see Bree, as a senior, play as well as she did," Haave said. "I'm really happy for her, because her Senior Night (a last-second loss to CSU-Pueblo) didn't go as planned."
 
Redshirt freshman Jaela Richardson scored a career-best 20 points while once again blocking three shots. Lewis scored 14 points and Maggie Justinak added 12 points and five assists. Jaiden Galloway paced MSU Denver with seven assists and three steals.
 
Chadron State never led and had actually fallen behind by 17, at 68-51, with 9:25 to go before rallying.
 
"The great thing is that we weathered two storms from them, on the road, and that shows a lot of growth for this team," Haave said. "We had just enough composure to get over the top. It was their Senior Night and they came at us."
 
The road matchup with Colorado Mesa (23-5, 19-3) comes against a team that won the first meeting in Grand Junction, Colo., 70-61 on Dec. 13.
 
"I'll worry about Mesa in a couple of hours," Haave said shortly after the game. "We're happy that we still get to play. Mesa is really good, strong on its home floor. They're the conference champions for a reason. We just need to go out there and give it a shot and see what happens."