DENVER – When you're sharing space with the No. 1 team in the NCAA Division II volleyball national rankings, sometimes you've got to adjust.
 
Volleyball's South Central Regional has been awarded to MSU Denver, and the top eight teams from the Rocky Mountain Athletic and Lone Star Conferences have converged upon the Auraria Event Center this week.
 
And so it is that the MSU Denver men's basketball team has had to practice at another gym while also moving Friday's home game against Barclay (Kan.) to Lakewood, Colo.
 
"It's a great problem to have," MSU Denver coach Dan Ficke said. "We're excited for (Coach) Jenny (Glenn) and the girls. It's great to have people in the department who are competing at the level where you want to be. We're able to see what that looks like, how they have been able to work and compete for a national championship. We're hoping that we'll get some of that greatness by osmosis after being in the same gym with them.
 
"And this will help develop our toughness. Conditions are never going to be perfect. You have to be able to adapt to situations. It's great to be good at home, but you've got to win on the road to win championships. It doesn't matter where we're playing, we're playing and we have to be the best version of ourselves."
 
The Roadrunners showed resilience and fortitude last weekend. After a disappointing 25-point loss at Oklahoma Christian in the opener, MSU Denver battled back from a 15-point deficit with less than nine minutes to go in regulation and defeated Arkansas-Fort Smith in overtime.
 
"We've done a lot of film work, trying to see what we did well and where we missed reads or defensive coverages," Ficke said. "There was a lot more good than we realized in that 25-point loss – there were some first-game jitters from a lot of freshmen playing for real for the first time. We learned quickly and adjusted well on Saturday."
 
This weekend, the Roadrunners will have an unusual combination of opponents. On Friday at 4 p.m., they'll face the aforementioned Barclay in a 4 p.m. game at Colorado Christian, before going on the road for a difficult 1 p.m MST matchup Sunday at Fort Hays State (Kan.).
 
Barclay is a member of the National Christian Collegiate Athletic Association and has lost to Great Lakes Christian (Mich.) and Grace Christian (Mich.) by an average score of 118-70. Central Oklahoma, ranked No. 11 in the Division II polls, beat Barclay 113-54 on Tuesday. The Bears played the Central Oklahoma game – and will play the MSU Denver game – as exhibitions on their schedule.
 
"We are looking to use this week and Friday as an opportunity to get some guys ready for Sunday and to continue to get better," Ficke said. "We have some big-time non-conference games coming up."
 
That starts with Fort Hays State, which received votes in the national coaches' preseason poll before going 1-1 last weekend, with a three-point loss at Southwestern Oklahoma State and a nine-point win over Arkansas Tech.
 
The Tigers were nationally-ranked much of last season while going 23-6 and 17-5 in the rugged Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletic Association. Their last game last season was a three-point loss to eventual national champion Northwest Missouri State in the MIAA Tournament semifinals. This season they are picked to finish third in the MIAA.

"They're a disciplined team that is methodical on offense," Ficke said. "They're not looking to score a million points on you. But their field goal percentage defense last year was 39 percent (ninth-best in Division II). It will be a real test for us offensively – can we execute against a solid team that doesn't beat itself, and can we get a team that wants to play slower out of that and get them to play closer to our pace?"

So far this season, MSU Denver has shown a solid ability to get to the free throw line (its 20 makes and 27.5 attempts per game rank among the top 21 in the country), and the Roadrunners have forced 17.0 turnovers per game to rank 44^th.
 
Tyrei Randall and Brayden Maldonado are a combined 26 for 30 at the line. Randall is 37^th in the country with an average of 22.5 points per game.
 
"We did a pretty good job of attacking and getting to the line," Ficke said. "It's a goal for us to make more free throws than our opponents attempt."