DENVER – With two weeks left in softball's regular season, Colorado Christian and Colorado Mesa have pretty much run away with the top two seeds for the RMAC Tournament.
Third and fourth, for now, are Regis and MSU Denver.
Those teams will battle it out this weekend in a four-game series at the Regis Softball Field. Doubleheaders are scheduled for Saturday at noon and Sunday at 11 a.m.
"On paper, we're very, very similar teams," MSU Denver coach
Annie Van Wetzinga said. "It looks like it's going to be a battle, and it always is with Regis. Cross-town rival. They play with a lot of pride, and we have to be able to show up and match that energy.
"We mirror each other a lot. We've even played an extremely similar schedule in non-conference, paired up with a lot of the same teams. Looking at our records, they're very similar, so it makes sense that we're where we are in the standings, and it should be four good games."
Regis is 28-19 overall and 22-10 for third in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference. The Roadrunners are 31-16 overall and 19-11 for fourth.
At the top of the league, incredible seasons by both Colorado Christian (41-5 overall, 29-1 RMAC) and Colorado Mesa (37-5, 29-1 RMAC) continue. Despite those teams' dominance of the RMAC (MSU Denver, by the way, split a doubleheader with Colorado Christian to hand the Cougars their only league loss), it seems possible that only one of them has a shot of reaching the NCAA Tournament's South Central Regional.
Shockingly, neither is among the top eight in the South Central Regional rankings – Colorado Mesa is ninth and Colorado Christian is 10
th, while Lone Star Conference teams hold down the top eight spots (including No. 8 St. Mary's, which split a doubleheader with MSU Denver). What it indicates is that there will possibly be only one team from the RMAC advancing – and if the league tournament winner is someone other than Mesa or CCU, both of those teams could be staying home.
So, at this points, how much will seeding matter for the six-team league tournament?
"One and two matters most, because they get the (first-round) bye," Van Wetzinga said. "And after that, everyone else is so similar from three through six I'm not sure if it matters that much. It's been a dogfight. But we still want to go out, compete and win and finish as high as we can. It appears that, even though anything is possible, Mesa and CCU have 1 and 2 locked up, so now it's more about putting some good games together and competing and rolling that into the conference tournament."
MSU Denver had a disappointing series last weekend, losing three of four at Fort Lewis, which is now one game out of sixth in the league.
The Roadrunners got disappointing injury news just before the trip, however.
"It didn't help morale, but we were still capable of putting more together," Van Wetzinga said. "We'd like to see a little more resilience and competitiveness out of the gate in each game."
Stepping up, though, was true freshman shortstop
Hannah DiFabio, who had two hits in each game while batting .615 (8-for-13) with seven RBIs. She capped the series with a pair of two-run homers in the finale. DiFabio has 11 multi-hit games in 16 starts since March 26 while batting .407 (24-for-59). For the season she's at .351 with team bests of eight homers and 35 RBIs.
"Hannah is really growing, and it's been fun to see that and see her get better, especially at shortstop," Van Wetzinga said.
Despite outscoring the Skyhawks 23-17 for the series, MSU Denver managed only the 13-2 win in the first game of a Saturday doubleheader. The Roadrunners left 18 runners on base in the first two games and 27 for the series.
"We were doing half of it," Van Wetzinga said. "We were putting people on base. Now we just have to have good team at-bats, good situational hitting. A quality at-bat doesn't always mean a hit. Make the pitcher work. Foul some pitches off. Send the message that we're here to compete."
