DENVER – Now that was uncomfortable.
 
Throughout this MSU Denver volleyball season, coach Jenny Glenn has enjoyed watching her team thrive in pressure situations, even though, at the time, going through it was unsettling.
 
Then came Friday night.
 
In the Division II South Central Regional semifinals.
 
With the season on the line.
 
And, when you're ranked No. 1 in the country, it's OK to say a possible national championship was on the line.
 
Against an 18^th-ranked Colorado Mesa team that was playing unbelievably well despite playing without two of its top three hitters.
 
And Mesa was up two sets to none.
 
And even then … after the top-ranked Roadrunners appeared to seize control by winning the third set 23-8, Colorado Mesa just wouldn't go away. The Mavericks led 13-6 in the fourth.
 
Somehow the tide turned.
 
The Roadrunners found the life of Riley – and Rylee – as left-side hitters Anderson and Hladky were suddenly unstoppable. MSU Denver rallied to win the fourth set 27-25 and finally wrapped it up 15-9 in the fifth.

MSU Denver improved to 30-1 overall winning its 24th straight match, tying last year's team for the second-longest win streak in program history.
 
"We haven't been in this situation all year," Glenn said. "Even though we didn't know how we'd respond, we kind of did know because this group has handled tough situations well.
 
"Even being down big in the fourth set, we talk about chipping away and not looking at the scoreboard and playing for one point at a time. And we do that well. We just chip away and all of a sudden we're the team that's up."
 
Let's piece those chips back together.
 
"We all came into the huddle and said, 'We're going to finish this,'" Anderson said. "We had no doubt about the match. We were going to fight for every single point."
 
Said Hladky: "This team has incredible mental toughness, and I trust every single one of them to do their job and step up when needed. And that's exactly what we did. We said, 'We're going to do this, and we're going to do it right now.'
 
"It had to be right now. So everyone was on board with that."
 
The Roadrunners clawed back within 16-14, gave up the next two points, but scored two back to make it 18-16.
 
Then Anderson's cross-court attack hit the tape but still came down inbounds. 18-17.
 
The next point, a long one, ended as a flat-footed Anderson found the back corner on a swing. 18-18.
 
Mesa appeared to go up 21-19, but a Glenn challenge led to a reversal and a Kelsey Gordon kill. 20-20.
 
A service error, one of a maddening 15 for the Roadrunners, put Mesa up 21-20, and then the Mavericks led 22-20 – three points away from pulling off a major upset.
 
But Anderson's kill made it 22-21.
 
Then Hladky finished a long rally with a kill. 22-22.
 
"Once our left sides started going off, we kept going to them," Glenn said. "They were in a really good head space. They did a nice job of staying aggressive, getting high and mixing up their shots to break things open for us."
 
Hladky's off-speed attack got the Mavericks off balance. 23-22 Roadrunners, their first lead of the set.
 
A Hladky kill made it 24-23 to get to the first of three set points.
 
Hladky had another kill to set up the final set point at 26-25.
 
And finally, a Mesa attack from the middle was long, and MSU Denver had forced a fifth set.
 
MSU Denver had 21 kills in that fourth set, including nine from Hladky and eight from Anderson. Hladky hit .500 in the set (no errors, 18 attacks) and Anderson hit .571 (no errors, 14 attacks).
 
"We were talking about our shots," Anderson said. "Things were working and we were moving our wrists. At the beginning of the match, we were hitting straight-on shots and they were digging us. So we talked about getting them off their platform a little bit."
 
In the fifth set, MSU Denver took the early lead and took control when a cartwheeling dig by Ashlyn Cianciulli set up a Kaylee Corsentino kill for a 4-1 lead.
 
Hladky had a kill and followed up with a service ace to make it 9-4.
 
Anderson, incredibly, finally had her first attacking error of the night (she'd previously had 19 kills on 34 swings), but a block assist by Maddy Williams and an Anderson kill made it 11-6.
 
The Roadrunners closed it out with three kills – one each from Anderson, Hladky and Williams – among its final four points.
 
"I'm super proud of this group and I think we just demonstrated how we can be tough in really hard situations," Glenn said. "When we saw the writing on the wall, we had a really good response to that."
 
Incredibly MSU Denver scrambled to win despite hitting .394 – one of its best performances of the year. On 175 swings! Against a nationally-ranked team playing well.
 
Hladky, the All-American, tied a career high with 22 kills while hitting .357. Anderson set a new career high with 21 kills while hitting .487. Right-side Corsentino was one shy of a career best with 15 kills while hitting .520.
 
The team's 82 kills – 82! – were the program's most since getting 83 in a 3-1 win over Colorado School of Mines on Oct. 26, 2007, and were six short of the rally-scoring era program record of 88, set in 2005.
 
Amela Qershia (40) and Delaney Eckhardt (32) each set for career-high assist totals. Qershia and Hladky each had two service aces. Cianciulli had 25 digs. And Williams and Kelsey Gordon each had three block assists.
 
It was MSU Denver's first rally from a 2-0 set deficit to win since Oct. 1, 2021, on the same floor, against the same Colorado Mesa team.

Now the Roadrunners are one win away from the first trip to the national quarterfinals in the program's Division II history.
 
But it won't be easy.
 
MSU Denver was in the same spot last year, playing the same ninth-ranked West Texas A&M team, on the same Auraria Event Center floor. Saturday's match starts at 6 p.m.
 
"What a coincidence," Hladky said, laughing. "Obviously there's a little history there and you're not going to get rid of that. But it's just another match and I trust our style of volleyball and who we are. We're just going to go out and do our thing and see what happens."
 
Said Glenn: "I'm proud of our mental toughness to put ourselves in a position to play tomorrow."