DENVER – As the grind of the regular-season wears on, the second-ranked MSU Denver volleyball team has an interesting three-matches-in-five-days stretch coming up.
The Roadrunners (17-1 overall, 10-0 Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference) play host to Adams State on Friday at 7 p.m. and to New Mexico Highlands on Saturday at 5 p.m., and then make the short drive over to Colorado Christian for a 7 p.m. match Tuesday.
"It's a little bit of a catch-22," MSU Denver coach
Jenny Glenn said. "It is more matches than we are used to playing in that time frame, but I think every team around would rather play a match than practice.
"So it is exciting that next week we'll be able to break up the week with that mid-week match. We've been fairly efficient in our matches (eight of the 10 league wins have been three-set sweeps), so I think we're in pretty good shape for it."
While on paper Colorado Christian is the most challenging matchup – the Cougars are 11-8 overall and 6-4 for sixth in the RMAC – both Adams State and Highlands present intrigue as they come to the Auraria Event Center.
Adams State is 6-12 overall and 3-7 and tied for ninth in the league. The Grizzlies took a set from nationally-ranked Colorado School of Mines on Sept. 30 (Mines just pushed MSU Denver to five sets on Saturday), and lost a five-set match to CSU Pueblo (receiving votes in the Division II poll) on Sept. 24.
"Adams is really athletic and aggressive," Glenn said. "I've watched them a lot, and they are competing with everybody across the net from them, even if the scores don't always reflect that. I expect them to play fearless and aggressive volleyball against us."
Highlands is 4-14 and 1-9, but the Cowgirls derailed a hot Chadron State team in a 3-0 sweep on Sept. 30.
"Highlands improved as the season went on last year and got into the (RMAC) tournament and played us in the first round," Glenn said. "I expect them to continue improving this year. They have some players who have different styles of attacking and we'll need to be prepared for that."
Meanwhile, Colorado Christian has continued to improve under Bobby Blanken, a former Glenn assistant at MSU Denver.
"They are much improved from last year," Glenn said. "Being healthy has made them a much more consistent, solid team. They have a great setter (Izzy Jones) and a left-side (Libby Goodman) who is among the best in the RMAC in kills per set (she's first at 3.9). She's a high-contact kid and we need to be ready for different shots than we've seen recently."
Like the atmosphere Saturday in the Roadrunners' five-set win at Colorado School of Mines' old venue at Volk Gymansium, Glenn expects a similarly-charged setting at Colorado Christian.
"They've been getting a great home environment with student and fan support in a small gym," she said. "There will be a lot of noise, just like we had on Saturday."
On Saturday, the Roadrunners got star-quality play from right-sides
Kaylee Corsentino (career-high 16 kills) and
Kelsey Gordon (10 kills, .381 hitting).
"Our right-sides last week performed very well," Glenn said. "We had some good matchups based on how Mines was playing us, and they stepped up and scored at a good rate."
MSU Denver will be looking to reach and surpass the second-best regular-season RMAC winning streak in league history. The Roadrunners have won 32 straight dating to the 2020 season – the league's second-longest streak is 33 by Nebraska-Kearney from 1995 to 1997. The league record is 39, by Nebraska-Kearney from 2003 to 2005.
