Roadrunners On Deck RMAC Championship Tournament First Round–March 5 Women’s Hoops at Mesa State 7 p.m. Men’s Hoops vs Mesa State 7 p.m. at Auraria  Semi-finals–March 8 at the World Arena in Colorado Springs Women’s Games Semifinal #1 at 11 a.m. Semifinal #2 at 4 p.m. Men’s Games Semifinal #1 at 1:30 p.m. Semifinal #2 at 3:30 p.m.  Finals–March 9 at the World Arena in Colorado Springs Women’s Game Final at 1 p.m. Men’s Game Final at 3:30 p.m. March 6 Baseball at Washburn 2 p.m. March 7-9 Baseball at Central Missouri State Tournament WEEKLY RESULTS Feb. 27 Men’s Hoops lost at University of Nebraska-Kearney 54-65 Women’s Hoops lost at University of Nebraska-Kearney 61-71 Feb. 26 Men’s Hoops beats Fort Hays State 64-63 Women’s Hoops lost at Fort Hays State 66-76 Notes: Metro baseball cancelled its three-game series against Nebraska-Omaha slated from March 1-2 due to the snow.

Clayton Smith and Patrick Mutombo are plugged into the same circuit. They play one-on-one after practice, even though they know each other’s moves better than they know their own.

The starters rarely disagree and they know what the media wants to hear from the NCAA Division II National Champions. Cocky stuff, like they are going to repeat and that’s the No. 1 goal.

But to these seniors, the national rankings and national title are trotted out red herrings, masking the most important thing, the next game.

“We treat every game as serious as anything,” Smith, the point guard, said. “We don’t look past anybody. We are preparing for Mesa just as hard, or harder, than we prepared for Nebraska-Kearney. We take every game serious. Once a game is over, we focus on the next opponent.”

After its 10-game win streak was snapped in a 65-54 loss at Nebraska-Kearney Feb. 27, the Metro men’s basketball team (16-3 RMAC) enters the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Championship Tournament as the third seed.

In the first-round of the eight-team playoff, the Roadrunners host Mesa State (11-8), the No. 6 seed, 7 p.m. March 5 at the Auraria Events Center. The other first-round contests in the tournament feature the top-seeded Nebraska-Kearney (18-1) versus eighth-seeded Adams State (10-9). The biggest match-up is between No.4 seed Fort Hays State (13-6) and No.5 Colorado Mines (12-7).

The tournament then moves to The World Arena in Colorado Springs for the semifinals on March 8. The championship game is March 9.

If Metro beats the Mavericks (they blew Mesa out by 33 points back in January), the Roadrunners will then play at 6:30 p.m. March 8, against the winner between Fort Lewis College (15-4) and No. 7 seed Southern Colorado (10-9).

Fort Lewis, the second seed, ousted Metro 95-86 in the Semi-finals in route to the 2002 RMAC title. The Skyhawks also beat the Roadrunners 84-75 in a regular-season game earlier this year.

But getting a Roadrunner to talk about ill feelings or any team other then Mesa or the North Central Regional Tournament, in which Metro is ranked fourth and follows the conference tournament, is like pulling teeth through a wormhole.

“There hasn’t been one speech about the regional, one speech about the Semi-finals of the RMAC,” Smith added. “We are looking at one game, and that is Mesa.”

“We just go out there and play everybody the same way and stick to our system no matter who we play, and see what the outcome is going to be,” added Mutombo, who, along with junior guard Luke Kendall, is scoring 18.6 points a game for third best in the league. “We don’t think about who is ranked. If you ask me what Kearney is ranked right now, I wouldn’t know.”

Just for informational purposes, Kearney was ranked No. 5 and Metro No. 6 nationally when the two collided on the Nebraska plains.

The consequential loss to the Lopers, who have not lost at home in 17 straight games, dropped the Roadrunners one spot to No. 7 in rankings. Kearney scored 19 points off 12 Metro turnovers and shot 47.4 percent in the second half for an 11-point win in front of a throng of 5,938 Loper fans.

“It started on defense for us,” Smith explained. “Our defense wasn’t as tight as we wanted it to be. Going into Nebraska you want to keep the game as close as possible, because to fight an uphill battle at Kearney is very hard. Most of the game it was close. They went on a six-point, eight-point run and they just got the better of us.”

Plus, the Roadrunners never got full usage out of starting center Lester Strong. The 6-foot-7 junior fouled out for the seventh time this year, this time after only 13 minutes.

“It has a huge impact anytime Lester just gets into foul trouble on the court,” Smith said. Strong averages 8.5 points and has grabbed 100 offensive rebounds, tops in the RMAC.

“You take a piece of that away from us, yeah we can still win, but it is much easier when he is playing,” Smith continued. “He kind of rights everybody’s wrongs when we take a bad shot or something, he’ll be there to get the offensive board.”

The loss, obviously, wasn’t something Metro wanted, but it was something they needed. In the last five and half years, Metro hasn’t dropped a lot of contests, so they take losing positively and it does one of three things: 1) Makes them work harder. 2) Makes a good teacher. 3) Makes them understand what it takes to win.

“Just like (head) coach (Mike Dunlap) says, when you win a lot, a lot of things are hidden,” Mutombo said. “You don’t really see your mistakes, but once you lose you see the things that you need to refocus on and what you need to spend more time on. It’s a good learning opportunity.”

Photo of - Joshua Buck Metro senior Patrick Mutombo passes the ball around the court in a 100-65 win against Regis Feb. 13 at the Auraria Events Center. Mutombo scored a game-high 30 points in that game and leads the Roadrunners into the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Championship Tournament that ends March 9.

Kendall scored 23 points to lead Metro against Kearney. Smith collected seven points and seven assists, while Mutombo struggled. After making his first three shots, the Preseason All American and RMAC Player-of-the-Year went two-of-11 the rest of the way for 12 points.

The starting trio played the full 40 minutes against Kearney after playing the full game in a compact 64-63 win at Fort Hays State Feb. 26. Mutombo led the team with 25 points, Kendall scored 17 and Smith had 13 assists. Center Lester Strong totaled nine points and eight rebounds in the game.

Metro missed four free throws in the final 45 seconds, giving Fort Hays every opportunity to pull off the win. But the Tigers couldn’t come up with any last-ditch heroics in front of 1,804 Fort Hays’ faithful as a three by Jonathan Raney with 15 seconds left clanked off the rim. The ball was batted around until the final horn.

On the year Smith, Mutumbo and Kendall have averaged 34 minutes a game. That number won’t come down, either. But for Smith and Mutombo, after playing so little in their first two years at Metro, they relish playing all the time now. Plus, at this point in the season, where the stakes are raised with each win and advancement in the bracket, players tend to forget oxygen or conserving energy.

“Two years ago I would have begged anybody to play five or 10 minutes a game,” Mutombo added. “Now that I’m getting a lot of playing time, I’m not going to complain. I just take whatever comes to me and do my best.”

The other first-round contests in the tournament feature the top-seeded Nebraska-Kearney (18-1) versus eighth-seeded Adams State (10-9). The biggest match-up is between No.4 seed Fort Hays State (13-6) and No.5 Colorado Mines (12-7).

The Lopers swept the season series with Metro for the first since the 1996-97 season. Kearney’s other win against the Roadrunners came in an 80-64 contest Jan. 23. So what will it take to beat the Lopers, the No. 1 ranked team in the region?

“A few adjustments,” Mutombo said. “We watched the tape (of the loss). We watched the mistakes we made. It was kind of obvious. We watched one minute of tape and we had the answer right there.”

If Metro can control the game and execute its system and game plan, postseason hardware might come. Then again, no one is keeping track of the media’s won-loss record.  
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There were no gentle oscillations for the Metro women’s basketball team this past week. Just one dramatic fall followed by a resurrecting rise. But stuck in between was a since of doom and that they had lost it all.

Heading into the final two games of the season, the Roadrunners knew they needed at least one win to seal a spot in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Championship Tournament. They lost them both despite shooting 46 percent. After a 71-61 lost to Nebraska-Kearney Feb. 27, in front of 4,650 Loper fans, the Roadrunners slunk back into their seats for the bus ride home as though the doctor just told them they had 48 hours to live. Their insides stirred like Lazy 8’s and kept pushing up that same bitter pill in the back of their throats. Season over.

Season reborn.

When 48 hours was up, and a complicated tie-breaking system puzzled through, Metro found out they were in the tournament after all.

“It was a sense of relief,” head coach Dave Murphy said. “We really felt like we worked awfully hard all year long. I felt like we really deserved to go to the playoffs. If there was any disappointment, it’s that we gave away three games and we should have been hosting.”

The Roadrunners (10-9 RMAC) nabbed the No. 7 spot in the tournament and play at Mesa State (14-5), the No. 2 seed, at 7 p.m. March 5 after The Metropolitan goes to print.

The conference Semi-finals (March 8) and finals (March 9) switch to The World Arena in Colorado Springs. If Metro gets by the defending RMAC champs in the first round, they’ll play the winner between Regis University (15-4) and Fort Lewis College (12-7), the No. 3 and No. 6 seeds, respectively.

Other first-round games have top-seeded Nebraska-Kearney (18-1) going against No. 8 seed Chadron State (10-9) and No. 4 Southern Colorado (14-5) versus No. 5 Fort Hays State (13-6).

“We are only two games away from playing for a championship,” Murphy said. “We look at it as a tremendous opportunity. We know that (Mesa is) waiting for us. We know that they’ll have a crowd. We love the crowd. And we understand how to take the crowd out of it.”

There is a hate-hate relationship between the Roadrunners and the Mavericks bubbling like seltzer and just might fizz over with their next game. Mesa knocked Metro out of the 2002 RMAC tournament with a 79-56 win. Last year Metro was seeded eighth and Mesa was the top seed. Though, the seedings are different this time around, the one-and-done scenario remains.

“It’s kind of the same thing this year, only I think we have a lot better chance to beat Mesa if we play our game,” starting center Rachel Grove said. “I have no doubt in my mind that we can take it to them.”

What gives the Roadrunners momentum and confidence despite the recent losses is the fact they upset Mesa 66-60 Jan. 9. Before that game a couple Roadrunners caught Mavericks’ head coach Steve Kirkham saying to a Mesa radio station that “Metro wasn’t going to be a problem.”

“We know we beat them once, we know we can beat them again,” said sophomore guard Crystal Deichert. “Of the players returning from last year; we have a grudge against them.”

In the loss to Kearney and the 76-66 loss to Fort Hays State Feb. 26, Metro turned the ball over 54 times.

Against Kearney, Metro lost the ball 28 times, which the Lopers converted into 35 points in transition, a glaring number that’s right up there with strobe lights.

“Turnovers were clearly the story,” Murphy said. “We out rebounded them. We out played them. We shut down their best three-point shooter (in Taryn Ninemire). I think we tried way too hard and forced a lot of things that really weren’t there. And give Kearney credit, they didn’t let us come down and do anything we wanted.”

Martina Gandzalova came off the bench to score 13 points against the Lopers on 5-of-5 shooting. Senior Malene Lindholm (13 points) and guard Natasha Molock (12) scored in double digits.

At Fort Hays, the Roadrunners had 24 turnovers, not to mention the lack of help they got from the referees in the second half. After being up 29-25 at the mid-way point, Metro shot only 10 foul shots, while the Tigers went to the free-throw stripe 23 times.

“They were not giving us any calls. It was unbelievable,” Murphy said.

“We should have beat Hays,” Deichert added. “The refs had a lot to do with it too. Whenever you go to Hays it is a five-on-eight battle. They like their home court.”

Molock scored 19 and Grove added 12 points against the Tigers.

Now, given a second chance with a RMAC tournament birth, the Roadrunners can’t wait to see what they can do with their talent, if anything prove they are worthy to be in the tournament after they were almost written off.

“We have an opportunity to do a real good thing,” Grove, a junior, said. “As (long) as I’ve been here, we’ve never gotten past the first round of the playoffs. To me, personally, I want to get to where we’ve never been before. We know what is at hand and we all want the same thing.”
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When a certain reporter has approached her for game-day comments, Rachel Grove always ends up expressing regrets for not knowing what to say, as if she is bound to spontaneously revel all with pithy quotes at the drop of the red button on the tape recorder.

One area Grove doesn’t need to apologize is on the 94 by 50 foot rectangle box, other wise know as the basketball court.              

It is within that 4,700 square feet of amber parquetry and sneaker squeaks where Grove deviates from the norm. She is considered sweet, caring, as mean as a baby rock, and a rather unassuming young lady outside the court’s confines. On the hardwood, though, Metro’s 6-foot-2 starting center from Arvada’s Faith Christian Academy sheds a new front.

Photo illustration by - Joshua Buck and Diana Marques

“The used to call her ‘The Beast’ in high school,” said Rachel’s mother Terri,  “yet, she give people notes when they were having a bad day.”

If someone looks down, Grove buys them a card. Friends and teammates seem to gravitate toward her when they have a problem. She’ll listen. Sometimes she’ll a pen a poem and in the near future, with continued guitar lessons, she could be writing songs. The junior also serves as a mentor to redshirt freshman Kristin Baker on the Metro women’s basketball team.

“A lot of young people are very selfish,” Metro head coach Dave Murphy said. “She is very unselfish.”

So the nickname doesn’t really fit, uh?

“It does really fit,” Terri responded. “She used to knock people down all the time.”

To make it clear, Grove isn’t some sanguinary blood thirsty type as the moniker “The Beast” might briefly suggest, nor is she a Dennis Rodman black sheep. But when it comes to the bust of elbows and hammering bodies in the paint, Grove is physical enough to shake off the best of them and usually she gets the best of them. She’s averaging 11 points and 5.4 rebounds a game this year for the Roadrunners (12-13; 10-9 RMAC), who at week’s end captured the No. 7 seed in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Championship Tournament.

“She is just a exceptionally fit and exceptionally quick young lady from baseline to baseline,” Murphy said. Metro likes to dump the ball over slower opponents’ heads to Grove underneath. Once she gains a step there is no catching up. “She is as quick a post player as there is in the conference.”

Having ran track and cross country at Faith Christian, Grove’s toned arms, quads and strong jaw make her fit for a marathon or American Gladiators.

“(The nickname) came about from her teammates,” said Brian Wall, the head girls basketball coach at Faith Christian. “She was such a strong post player inside that no one enjoyed practicing against her.”

Ever since her days as a Eagle at Faith Christian, Grove has constantly brought to the court that same intensity and effort. She was a Class 3A All-State selection in 1999 and 2000, while at Faith Christian. Grove averaged double-digits in points and around eight rebounds a game, Wall said. She was also named tournament MVP

after the Eagles’ marched to the 2000 Class 3A state title. She led all scorers with 11 in the title game. She added six rebounds. More importantly, was the job she did limiting Marta Losonczy’s stat line.

Losonczy had been averaging some 20 points during the postseason for Aspen. Grove held her to seven points below her average with beastly man-to-man defense, no pun intended. 

“She was without question our most valuable player that year, just because she did so many things,” Wall said. “The other girls just felt a lot of confidence when she was in the game. She rebounded well. She certainly scored. She played great defense. She wasn’t afraid to mix it up. In that respect she was really a strong leader amongst her peers and teammates, somebody to look to as a real anchor for that team.”

As a Metro freshman, it was vintage Grove all over again. She played right away for the Roadrunners in the 2000-01 season and started in 15 games. She averaged 10 points and nearly five rebounds a contest. During one stretch, she dropped in a career-high 23 points and 20 points. Sandwiched in between was a 17-point and seven-rebound performance against the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. Murphy was sitting on the other side of the bench that day in 2001, as head coach at UCCS. He remembers it all too well two years later.

“We had to play against her when she was a freshman and she literally tore us up,” Murphy said. “She single-handedly just ate us alive. We knew she was a very good player. Her sophomore year she was a totally different young lady.”

You’d be hard pressed in getting Grove to talk about last season in detail, when she averaged only five points and three rebounds and saw her minutes decrease.

“It was just frustrating, because I knew I wasn’t playing to my potential,” Grove said. “That is kind of in the past and I’m looking forward now. It was a frustrating year for me. I don’t really know what else to say about it.”

From the distinguishing tone of disgust in her voice, it’s obvious Grove has thought about  last season long and hard. She resents the way

she played like a defense that hangs on her back all night. By the end of the 2002 season, a long coal train pulled so many loads of her confidence away with it.

“Last year I just wasn’t playing with confidence and it was a bad year for me,” Grove added. “But this year I feel like I’m playing with a lot more confidence and it has made all the difference.”

Grove is back in 2003. From Jan. 18 to Feb. 26, a span of 12 games, Grove scored in double digits, averaging 14 points and six rebounds, recording two double-doubles, shooting 48 percent from the floor and 80 percent from the free-throw line. Staggering numbers for a player who has made a commitment to relax more this year, by listening to catchy music and taking a “power nap” before games.

At some point she transitions from sweetie to meanie.

“It happens when I step on the court,” Grove said. “I just know that there is work to be done. I just have to go out there and be aggressive. I usually don’t take it off the court. It’s the only way to go about it really; to be aggressive and win some games.”

Murphy sees the same drive and focus in Grove’s academic life, which explains why since high school she has kept about a 3.9 or higher GPA. She’s majoring in biology with a chemistry minor (Youch!). She wants to become a physician’s assistant and dreams of going to third-world countries to provide health care to children. It’s a worthy goal and matches right along with her gentle personality.

But there is a thin line between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. For Grove it’s about two-inches thick, otherwise know as the out-of-bounds line.
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