DENVER – On a night where motivation could have been diminished, the No. 3 MSU Denver volleyball team came out and did what it needed to do anyway.
 
The Roadrunners, with the No. 2 seed for the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Tournament already secured, may not have played their best but also were never seriously threatened in a 3-0 (25-20, 25-22, 25-20) win over UCCS.
 
"We need to come out stronger next week, for sure, but we did get the job done," outside hitter Avaline Lai said. "We took care of business when we needed, and we didn't let anything affect us in getting it done in three."
 
MSU Denver (13-1 overall, 11-1 RMAC) is now scheduled to play seventh-seeded South Dakota Mines in an RMAC quarterfinal on April 8 at 1:30 p.m.
 
"The whole year has been playing for the love of the game in a lot of ways," MSU Denver coach Jenny Glenn said. "Any time we get to play it's a good thing. Obviously it's easier to get up for matches against teams who are at the top of the conference, but we finally found a bit more flow toward the end of the match."
 
Led by Lai's 11 kills on .476 hitting, the Roadrunners hit .322 as a team, served five aces, and recorded six team blocks.
 
"Hitting over .300 as a team was a highlight," Glenn said. "Just about everybody hit for a good percentage. It wasn't our cleanest match by any stretch of the imagination, but it's good to get a match in so we had one before a bye weekend."
 
Kayla White had seven kills, Mikayla McClinton had six kills and two block assists while hitting .500, Alexis Benda had six kills and Ember Canty had five kills and three blocks (one solo).
 
Jessa Megenhardt and Joli Sadler each had 14 assists, while Delaney Eckhardt had six while playing for Sadler in the 6-2 rotation during the third set.
 
"It starts in practice," Lai said. "We've been running off all our setters and working on our connection with them. Jo set me really well, tight on the net. And when Delaney went in, she was setting me just as consistently. The consistency helps, so that I can just go up and swing because I know they're going to put up a good ball."
 
Lai, the Division II National Player of the Week after her Feb. 13 performance against Nebraska-Kearney, is one of the many options the Roadrunners have in their arsenal. Wednesday was her latest time to shine.
 
"When she's really aggressive, she's really hard to stop," Glenn said. "And she really turned a corner last week. We've been working on that piece of her game, not getting passive and even if she's making errors to take big swings."