DENVER – Never. Stop. Fighting.
 
The MSU Denver men's basketball team never did that Saturday, despite facing multiple deficits that seemed insurmountable. Eventually, though, the Roadrunners lost for a second straight night to another of the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference's hottest teams, a 79-70 setback to UCCS.
 
"As a coach you never want to lose, but there's a way that you want to lose, and we went down swinging," MSU Denver coach Michael Bahl said. "One or two plays is usually what it comes down to, and unfortunately we weren't able to make those. But our guys played hard. We competed to the bitter end, and as a coach that's all you can ask."
 
It was a disappointing Senior Night for Maris Colton, Keyshaad Dixon and Ra'Shawn Langston, who were honored in a pre-game ceremony.
 
"My heart hurts for the guys in that locker room, the three seniors," Bahl said. "Because I know how hard they work and how much they care. But the good news is that wasn't our last home game. We get one more on Monday."  
 
Indeed, MSU Denver wraps up the regular-season home portion of its schedule Monday with a rescheduled game against Fort Lewis at 6 p.m.
 
Like New Mexico Highlands on Friday and UCCS on Saturday, Fort Lewis is on a roll, with an 8-1 record in its last nine games (the only loss was to Highlands).
 
"This one hurts, but you're playing another hot team – if not the hottest team – in the RMAC come Monday," Bahl said. "We've got our work cut out for us, but these guys will bounce back and we'll be ready to go."
 
The Roadrunners were a study in resiliency Saturday.
 
Down 18-10 early, MSU Denver cut it to 23-22. Trailing 39-26, the Roadrunners scored the next five points. Behind 41-31 at halftime, it wasn't long until the deficit was 43-39. And then 49-47, on a fast-break dunk by Tyrei Randall.
 
Think it was over when UCCS bumped the lead back to 57-47? MSU Denver didn't, closing the deficit to 57-53 on three free throws by Randall. UCCS made it 67-55, but the Roadrunners got within 67-62 on Ghage Kenan's 3-pointer.
 
Finally UCCS pushed the lead to 71-62 with 2:53 left. But then two free throws by Laolu Oke got MSU Denver back to within 72-68 with 1:45 left. Two more Oke free throws made it 75-70 with 1:08 to go, and it really wasn't over until Alijah Comithier's floater with 36 seconds left gave the Mountain Lions a 77-70 lead.
 
Randall led MSU Denver with 18 points, but almost taken for granted was another monster game from Oke – 15 points, 14 rebounds, four steals, three blocked shots and three assists.
 
Oke now has 291 rebounds this season (an average of 11.6 per game) and needs seven more to break Jonathan Morse's single-season school record of 297, set in 2011-12. He's currently fourth on the list, with Morse also ranking second with 296 in 2012-13 and Shun Tillman third with 294 in 1989-90.
 
"And he's beat up," Bahl said. "He's just doing everything he can possibly do for his teammates, and I commend him for that."
 
Miles Gibson added 12 points, Colton had an eight (including another mind-blowing monster dunk) and Langston also had eight.
 
While UCCS improved to 19-7 overall and 14-6 in the RMAC with its 10^th win in 11 games (the only loss was to Fort Lewis), MSU Denver dropped to 16-9 and 10-9. The Roadrunners have three regular-season games left.
 
"In about a week and a half, it comes down to a one-game season for about 95 percent of the teams in the country," Bahl said. "You just try to make sure your guys' spirits are where they need to be, because anything can happen in that (conference) tournament. We still have to work to get into it, and then we want to have some momentum going into it. Our guys understand that and they're ready for it."