DENVER – No. 1 MSU Denver could return home from a weekend road trip with at least a share of a conference championship.
 
The Roadrunners, 14-0 in Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference play with four matches left in the season, are ahead of three teams that are 12-2 – all of whom MSU Denver defeated to hold the tiebreaker advantage.
 
Thus, with wins Friday at 6 p.m. at Western Colorado and Saturday at 4 p.m. against Fort Lewis, MSU Denver would assure itself of having no more than two conference losses and would clinch home-court advantage throughout the RMAC Tournament.
 
"This group has a lot of confidence, and our goals have always been big," MSU Denver coach Jenny Glenn said. "That (home-court advantage) is our beacon in the lighthouse. But we take it one match at a time and let things fall into place. When you start putting 'must to' or 'has to' on things, that muddies the water a little bit.
 
"And we've done an incredible job of staying in the present and we'll need to continue to do that this weekend."
 
While hosting the NCAA Division II South Central Regional Tournament is another potential beacon in a different lighthouse down the coast – MSU Denver was ranked No. 1 in the first regional rankings of the season that were released Wednesday – the Roadrunners are first looking to avoid treacherous waters in a potentially rocky trip to the Colorado ports of Gunnison and Durango.
 
"It's a tough road trip," Glenn said. "And it's against two teams that are right in the mix of things from a conference standpoint. So it will be a good test for us."
 
Western Colorado is 12-10 overall and is sixth in the RMAC at 7-7 – the top eight teams will qualify for the league tournament.
 
"Western is really solid," Glenn said. "It's a good, scrappy defensive team, similar to what we saw against Regis (in a 3-2 win on Saturday). They'll extend rallies and make us earn our points."
 
Fort Lewis is 6-12 and 6-8, tied for seventh in the RMAC. MSU Denver swept the Skyhawks 3-0 (25-20, 25-12, 25-23) in Denver on Sept. 18.
 
"We saw Fort Lewis early in the season, but that was a long time ago," Glenn said. "We saw a couple of different looks from them."
 
While MSU Denver has won 18 straight matches to improve to 20-2 and is spending its third week at the No. 1 team in NCAA Division II, it hasn't always been easy. The Roadrunners are coming off the previously mentioned win over Regis, when they lost the third set 25-13 to fall behind 2-1.
 
"We were maybe a little tighter than I realized going into that match," Glenn said. "Sometimes we were a little surprised by what Regis did instead of being ahead of the play. And Regis played incredible defense against us – from a blocking and floor defense standpoint. We made some adjustments, enough to win the match. But I would've liked to have seen them earlier or more consistently. That's where we know we can be better."