DENVER – The MSU Denver women's soccer team started Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference play this season against Westminster.
 
The Roadrunners don't want the season to end against Westminster.
 
MSU Denver travels to Salt Lake City to face the Griffins on Sunday at 1 p.m. in the first round of the RMAC Tournament.
 
In the regular-season meeting at the Assembly Athletic Complex on Sept. 15, MSU Denver gave up the first goal but fought back for a 1-1 tie.
 
"The biggest thing from that game was our mentality," MSU Denver coach Kat Mertz said. "We were pretty determined to come back in the second half and really rally to get a point there. It was our first game in the RMAC, and it kind of catapulted us into having a confident mindset in our remaining games."
 
In a season of near-misses – if games were 87 minutes long MSU Denver would be 14-2-1 overall instead of 11-3-4, and would have gone 9-2-1 in the RMAC instead of 7-2-3 – the Roadrunners still earned the fifth seed for the tournament
 
Sunday's winner advances to a Wednesday semifinal that would be, barring a major upset, played at Colorado School of Mines.
 
Westminster is 10-5-2 overall and finished 8-3-1 for fourth in the RMAC. The Griffins are receiving votes in the national top 25 poll.
 
"Westminster is a good team with a lot of threats up top," Mertz said. "Obviously Alexa Maple (fourth in Division II with 12 assists) is a handful, and they score a lot of goals. It's a really good test for us."
 
While MSU Denver has scored more goals over the second half of the season, it still relies on a strong defense that is 22^nd in Division II with a goals-against average of 0.56. The Roadrunners have posted 11 shutouts, including in six of the last seven games. They've allowed only one goal in the last seven, and that was on a penalty kick.
 
Meanwhile, the Roadrunners have crisscrossed the RMAC in the past 10 days, traveling to southwestern Colorado for two games last weekend, then to western South Dakota on Wednesday before trekking out to Salt Lake City for the tournament opener.
 
"We've talked about how we have to be road warriors," Mertz said. "We have to love playing on the road more than we do at home. The teams playing in November are gritty. They are playing on the road and dealing with adverse conditions, with weather and fields and not having a home crowd and not sleeping in their own beds. That's what makes November soccer special, and it's our goal to get to November soccer."