DENVER – Last season was the first time the Adams State women's basketball team had won more than six Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference games since 2010-11, which was the last time the Grizzlies finished above .500 in league play.
 
So maybe it took awhile for teams to realize that these Grizzlies, who are now 13-5 overall and 9-5 for fourth place in the RMAC, are awfully good.
 
"There's enough of a sample size for everyone to know they are for real," MSU Denver coach Tanya Haave said.
 
The Grizzlies come to the Auraria Event Center for a 5 p.m. game Friday on We Back Pat Night. It's the first of two weekend games for the Roadrunners, who play host to Fort Lewis (7-11, 4-8) on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. The weekend as a whole is part of MSU Denver's Alumni Weekend.
 
"It's a big weekend, on and off the court," Haave said. "We need to do well and hopefully we can get both games."
 
We Back Pat Night supports the Pat Summitt Foundation, which is focused on advancing research for treatment and a cure for Alzheimer's disease. The MSU Denver men's team, which welcomes back two of its legendary teams (the 2002 Division II national champions and the 2013 Division II national runner-up) will also recognize We Back Pat Night during its 7 p.m. game.
 
The Roadrunners will have light blue – "Summitt Blue" – warm-up shirts.
 
Haave was a legendary player at Tennessee under Summitt, the legendary head coach.
 
"It's clearly a special night for me," Haave said. "We're happy to support it, and I commend coach (Dan) Ficke and the men's team for supporting it. She's the reason I coach, and I think about her every time I coach."
 
Once the game Adams State starts, Haave and her team will no doubt be locked in on what is an important matchup. Despite standing 8-10 overall and 6-6 for seventh in the RMAC, the Roadrunners know they are close to where they want to be considering they lost three games to top five teams in the league by a combined seven points and were upset on the road in a seven-point defeat.
 
Turn those four games around and MSU Denver would be 10-2 and in first place in the league. As it is, MSU Denver holds tiebreaker advantages over sixth-place CSU Pueblo and well as Colorado Mesa and UCCS, tied for eighth in the league. The top eight teams qualify for the RMAC Tournament, with the top four teams hosting first-round games.
 
"We should have beaten (second-place) Regis (a three-point road loss), and should have beaten (first-place Colorado School of) Mines (a one-point home loss)," Haave said. "So I think our players know that if they stay together and keep getting better, it's going to be good. The tough lessons that we've learned along the way are helping us. Our non-conference schedule helped us. We've played tough people.
 
"Right now, everybody in the conference is vulnerable and everybody is beatable."
 
Adams State has a couple of impressive league wins, including an 82-52 blowout of third-place Black Hills State on Dec. 30 and a 15-point win last Friday over fifth-place Westminster.
 
"They get you to play fast and throw the ball away," Haave said. "If we can avoid that, that's a huge key for us. They want to play helter-skelter, kind of create chaos, and we have to limit the chaos.
 
"I'm anxious to see how we do against it. It's similar to how Mines flies around, but I think Adams is a little smaller and then more athletic. We've seen it, just not full-court."
 
MSU Denver, a young team that has been hit with injuries and absences to seven of its top eight scorers at some point throughout the season costing them anywhere from one to 16 games, has struggled at times with turnovers. The Roadrunners had one of their best nights of the season with just seven turnovers in a Friday win at Western Colorado.
 
But this will be something different.
 
"We're going from a team that sits way back to a team that's ultra-aggressive," Haave said. "Completely different style."
 
While Adams State gets excellent guard play, so too does MSU Denver.
 
That group is led by Kendra Parra – one of seven players in Division II to be averaging at least 18.1 points, 6.2 rebounds, 1.9 assists and 1.9 steals per game. Over her last five games, Parra is averaging 18.2 points, 8.0 rebounds, 2.2 assists and 3.2 steals.
 
But, like her teammates, Parra isn't fixated on individual numbers, but is instead pursuing team results.
 
"Her focus was scoring early, but now she's passing up some shots that I don't want her to pass up," Haave said.
 
"It's kind of indicative of our team. No one cares who's scoring, no one cares who is getting the rebounds … it's a great feeling. They care that we get stops, and that we get scores. That's nice."
 
That's the sign of a team that is coming together.
 
"We're really starting to believe," Haave said. "And we're really tight. We're really together right now."