Roadrunners On Deck April 8 Baseball at Northern Colorado Double Header 1p.m. Men and Women’s Tennis at Colorado Mines 3 p.m. April 9 Men and Women’s Tennis vs Colorado Christian 3 p.m. Auraria April 10 Women’s Tennis at Air Force Academy 2 p.m. April 11 Baseball at Nebraska-Kearney 6 p.m. Men’s and Women’s Tennis vs Southern Colorado 3 p.m. Auraria April 12 Baseball at Nebraska-Kearney Double Header 1 p.m. Men’s and Women’s Tennis vs CU-Colorado Springs 2 p.m. Auraria Men’s and Women’s Tennis vs Colorado College 3 p.m. Auraria April 13 Baseball at Nebraska-Kearney Noon WEEKLY RESULTS April 2 Baseball  vs Northern Colorado GAME 1: W 11-10 GAME 2: L 14-15 April 4 Baseball vs Fort Hays State GAME 1: L 1-13 GAME 2: L 9-13 (10 innings) April 5 Baseball vs Fort Hays State GAME 1: L 7-10 (9 innings) GAME 2: W 4-3

The old Tivoli backdrop is not making the Roadrunners feel at home of late. And batting practice has been reduced to a chain-link cage for fear that a homerun might collide with a car heading eastbound on Auraria Parkway.

In a last-minute discovery on April 3, a day before they were to play a four-game home series against Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference leaders Fort Hays State, the Metro baseball team found out that the blizzard of 2003 did extensive damage to its homerun screen, which has since been taken down. The screen, seen as a “liability” and must be replaced, extends from centerfield to the leftfield corner, capturing balls streaming over the outfield fence before they touchdown in the downtown traffic flow.

The damage forced the Roadrunners to move the home series, and possibly the rest of their home games, to Regis University.

But Regis Field didn’t bring the Roadrunners any luck this past week, losing the first three games to Fort Hays before salvaging the final contest on a granite pitching performance by Jason Humphrey in a 4-3 win. The Roadrunners lost by scores of 13-1, 13-9 and 10-7 on games played April 4-5.  Metro had plenty of chances to nab the series, though.

“We didn’t have timely hits and we didn’t have timely pitching,” said Metro pitcher Brad Swartzlander. “Hays is a good team. They are a good hitting team, but we should have came out with three of the four games.”

Humphrey was daring the odds and fate in trying to silence Fort Hays’ bats—and most of the time he won. The senior righthander threw a complete-game, allowing three runs on seven hits for his second win of the year.

“Humphrey’s performance was  a big performance,” head VInce Porreco said, “ not only for our team, but also for him, being able to go out and get a complete game against Fort Hays is quite an achievement and he did a great job of hitting his spots and locations and mixing it up.”

Metro (18-14; 5-7 RMAC) is currently fifth in the eight-team conference, with Fort Hays (28-5; 10-2) the frontrunners. Heading into the last 19 games of the regular season, the Roadrunners look to get on roll. Last season at this time, Metro held a lowly 13-15 record overall and were 2-6 in the conference, before winning 21 of the final 28 games, including the RMAC Championship.

“The conference is still wide open,” Porreco said. “…No. 1, we have to take care of our job and in each series we have to perform. I think we are capable of doing what we did last year and having a running streak of wins. So I am very confident in that, but we have to show up every single day and the pitching has to make the difference.”

The Tigers, ranked ninth in Division II, battered Metro’s best starter into his second loss of the season in the first game played April 4. Fort Hays got to Blake Eager, whose record dropped to 5-2 on the year, for nine runs on 17 hits in five innings as the Roadrunners lost 13-1.

In the second game of the double header, Metro came back from a 6-0 hole to tie the contest at 7-7 in the seventh on a bases clearing double by designated hitter Clint Cleland. Metro rallied again to tie it at 9-9 in the ninth, but the Tigers scored four runs, three unearned, in the 10th for a 13-9 edge.

The first game April 5 was a replica of the latter. The Tigers jumped on Metro starter Dan Morasci, scoring six runs in the third for a 7-1 lead. Metro had two errors in the inning, six the game.

“A  good team will play together,” Porreco said. “You can make mistakes but the other end of the team will pick you up. In other words, if the pitchers are making mistakes, the defense and the hitters have to step up.

“Our hitters kept us in all the ball games. But then again you have to have all three aspects. Your pitching has to be there and your defense has to be there in order to make a difference. Hitting wise we did that. We did what it takes to win a ball game, but our defense and our pitching didn’t play well.” 

Metro played small ball to score four runs in the fourth and two in the seventh  to  tie it at 7-7. But once again, the Roadrunners bullpen didn’t let the Metro hitters have another chance, giving up three runs in the top of the ninth to lose10-7. 

“When we are on the mound the game is in our hands and its how we perform that determines what the other team does,” said Swartzlander, a top reliever. “If we go out there, throw strikes and hit our spots then we are going to keep them off the base pads. It is up to us to beat the other team. And then defense plays a role in that and hitters play a role in that, but it all starts with pitching.”   

Photo by - Danny Holland Senior John Burney dives into third base during the dubble header against Fort Hays April 5 at Regis Field.

Metro heads off to play a four-game series at Nebraska-Kearney (12-21; 2-10) April 11-13. They won’t play in town until April 25 against New Mexico Highlands (18-13; 4-4). The Roadrunners played the first nine games of the season on its home turf, Auraria Field, winning eight of them. Since then, Metro has only played twice at home and has gone 10-13. While the players admit that they are falling behind in classes with all the road trips, there is still no reason that they shouldn’t win away from home if they play together.

“In any kind of sport it’s a long season and you have to come ready to go, and everybody has to be apart of that,” Porreco said. “It can’t be just nine guys, it has to be the 26 guys who are actually on the field, because everybody will get the call at some point in time. It’s our job as coaches to make sure everybody is ready to go. I feel very confident in what we can be capable of doing in the second half of the RMAC season.”

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Clayton Smith and Patrick Mutombo gained public recognition when they undressed Kentucky Wesleyan in front of a nationwide audience for the 2002 NCAA Division II Championship. When the buzzer sounded on the 80-72 victory, a CBS TV crew closed in on Mutombo as he flexed his pectorals, shouted into the camera and skipped away.

Voted the game’s most outstanding player after dropping 29 points on the Wildcats, it was a performance that quenched all doubts. Somewhere on that same court in Evansville, Ind., Smith, whose line (nine points, 12 assists and four steals) earned him a spot on the 2002 Elite Eight team, quietly silenced his own critics. 

When there’s one, the other is a whisper away.

Photo by - David Merrill Since coming to Metro, graduating seniors Patrick Mutombo (left) and Clayton Smith have teamed up to lead the Roadrunners to three conference championships and two national championships. Mutombo has ideas of playing professional basketball Europe, while Smith, who leaves as Metro’s all-time assist leader, remains undecided about his future.

“We’ve spent so many years together and we’ve been through a lot together,” said Mutombo, who was on the receiving end of many of Smith’s school record 612 assists. “Our stories are a little bit different, but similar to a certain extinct. We both struggled in the beginning and we stuck with it and we went through the process of maturation and in the end we came out victorious, because we learned and grew as young men and became good basketball players and we developed successful relationships with our coach.”

This season opponents had to pay an equal degree of attention to the senior tandem, who will graduate in May. With Smith controlling the point with unworldly quickness and dribbling craftily through defensive holes, and Mutombo floating pull up jumpers over tangled arms, the duo was Metro’s muscle up the middle.

Together they are a DNA masterpiece.

“You got to be strong up the middle,” Metro head coach Mike Dunlap said. “…. The point guard and Mutombo played through the middle for us, mentally and physically. Mentally, both of them are extremely smart people. As far as physically, both were unique. They were genetic freaks in one form or another. Clayton had to be the quickest player in the country and I know he is, from one spot to another.

“And what Patrick brought was long arms, so you couldn’t block his shot. The best have tried at this level and they couldn’t consistently block his shot, because of that seven-foot (wingspan). He is the best 15-foot jump shooter in the country and that goes for Division I, II, III and NAIA.”  

The 190-pound Mutombo, elongated over a 6-foot-5 frame, was recently named a first-team All American by the Basketball Times. Last year he was a second-team All American.

Graduating in political science, Mutombo set a new Roadrunners’ single-season record by making 267 field goals, breaking his old mark of 250 from last year. He also improved his scoring average to 19.3 points from 16.6 and was Metro’s leading scorer in 18 of the 33 games he played.

Smith, a business major, cuts a shorter shadow. Standing at 5-foot-5, the conductor of the Roadrunners offense and defense led the nation in assists and assist-to-turnover average with a 4.49 ratio (8.3 assists to every 1.8 turnover). He also finished second on Metro’s career steals list with 251.

“I would stack their achievements up against Duke (University),” Dunlap began. “I would stack their achievements up against Kentucky Wesleyan. I would stack their achievements against any of the programs in the country in terms of what they achieved. They’ve maxed out their potential in terms of national championships, in terms of conference championships, in terms of all-conference players, in terms of being all-region, in terms of being MVP of the national championship game. We’ve had all of that in those two guys. It must feel good to be them to have maxed out their potential.”

Both spent time on the bench, then finding that happy ending with success on and off the floor, and, not to mention, two national championships, which they will hold onto for the rest of their lives.

Both came to Metro as raw, sawed off freshman, thinking they knew it all, quickly realizing they knew little. They learned fast, though, progressing forward through the forest of fears, finding their self-worth and what they wanted to do with that elusive dove called education, which can only be grasped just right.

“Graduation is a great moment in their lives,” Dunlap said. “….I will certainly miss them, no question about it. But I’ll miss the little idiosyncrasy of each guy, and the look here or when they are grab assing around or when they are making fun of me. That’s the part I miss.

“It’s time for these guys to go to better leadership, more challenging circumstances, in terms of interpersonal relationships and building their own families. They’re ready.”

For the coaches it’s different. They’ll be here next year. College basketball players, though, have a limited lifespan. They were freshman, it seems, just seconds ago. By May they’ll be alumni. 

“After it’s over, everything goes too fast,” Smith said. “Whenever you have fun with something and as soon as it is over, it seems like it went by in a second.”

As of last week, Smith was unsure if he wanted to pursue a pro basketball career or get into the business field right after graduation. One thing is for certain: it’ll be hard to picture Smith without a circular orange piece of leather in his hands. Hoops has hoisted him so high. 

“Basketball is everything to me. It was one of the biggest parts of my life, if not the biggest,” Smith said. “It did so much for me in my life. It is the main reason why I’m going to have my degree in May. It’s allowed me to travel around the country. It’s allowed me to meet thousands and thousands of great people. It’s just opened so many doors for me.” 

Mutombo has a great chance of going overseas and playing in Europe and admitted as much, but right now he is concentrating on finishing school.

Four former Metro stars have played or are playing overseas currently. DeMarcos Anzures (a Roadrunner from 1997-00), Metro’s leading point scorer, spent some time playing on the other side of the Atlantic. Lee Barlow (1998-00) is playing in New Zealand for the Wellington Saints. John Bynum (1999-00) is playing in Grevenbroich, Germany. Kane Oakley (1998-01) is playing in the Australia National Basketball League for the Cairns Taipans. Last month, Lee Bethea (2000-02), a starter on last year’s national title team, signed to play with the Harlem Globetrotters National team.

“I came here with a purpose,” Mutombo said. “I came here on  a mission. I wanted to realize some things. I didn’t necessarily understand the process required for me to reach my goals and that is where Coach Dunlap and the whole Metro State village came into play... At times it has been very painful, but also at times it was a great and full of joy, cheers, laughter and all that good stuff.”

Smith echoes the same feelings, saying he “wouldn’t change the way anything went…. I just take everything for what it is. I had a great career and I have nothing to be ashamed about.”

All year long the two seniors praised each other’s with a “shout out” here and there.  Whatever happens after graduation, their names will forever be etched on two national titles and on a plaque in the men’s basketball locker room, which has the name of ever Roadrunner player that graduated from Metro under Dunlap’s tenure.

That degree alone deserves a “shout out,” but such things speak volumes without a megaphone, giving confidence and silencing erases doubts.

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Junior James Edwards and Senior John Burney have become two players this season that have moved Metro’s baseball team in the right direction. Even though the two players care more about this team then they do themselves, their individual numbers have made them stand out as the the Roadrunners contend for a spot in the West Regional Tournament.

“Since we got our tough part of the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference over with, we need to pretty much [defeat] the rest of the RMAC [teams], so we can make the RMAC tournament and hopefully we can go on from there.” Edwards said.

“I think we all have to start clicking together we haven’t quite been able to put all the pitching, defense and offense together in the same game, and that’s where I’m gonna have to come in at as a senior,” Burney added. “We [as a team need to] keep working, so that in the next few weeks we can really finish the season with all three phases of the game working for us.

“I truly feel that I am a key contributor of this team and if I start playing well I think the other guys will get a lot of confidence in that...I think we’re still in a good position to do (get into the regional) at the end of the year.” 

As Metro’s starting first baseman, Edwards has been nothing short of scorching this season. He has put up numbers big enough to place fear in opposing pitchers and also leads the team in homeruns (eight), batting average (.442) and slugging percentage (.731). He has improved throughout the season and has strengthened the line-up, which all ready had teammate and All-Region standout Brian Edwards and Burney hitting well before his arrival this season.

When asked why he is hitting so well, James Edwards replied: “I have no idea…. I’ve just hit fairly well, been doing what I’ve been told to do in practice and tried taking that into the games, thinking there’s no pitcher that can get me out.”

Burney’s leadership as a whole, he said, starts with keeping the team involved and on the same page. He has won hardware both on and off the field. Earlier this year, he won an award for his work in the classroom and having an outstanding GPA. Last season he took home postseason conference honors for his work on the field. Burney has made his bat play heavy metal hits. He’s hitting .317 with 26 RBIs and four homers. He hit .416 in the first seven games.

Although his numbers seem average now, don’t be fooled. Just like April, Burney’s bat has some spring in it during this month. Last season Burney was able to go from a small batting slump in March, a month in which his team only was able to win 5-15 games, to swinging for the fences and earning himself a spot on the All-RMAC Tournament team in May. Burney has continued to work on his game and is starting to improve this season.

“I feel I have been making strides this year,” Burney said. “I have yet to really click and feel like I’ve found my rhythm at the plate in the game as a whole. But over the course of all the years that I’ve played I’ve seen myself as a slow starter and I see myself starting to make some adjustments the last few weeks that will lead to a very positive and very successful second half of the season.”

Both Burney and Edwards have been able to make things happen for the Roadrunners this season and if they are able to continue this type of play, the Roadrunners can find themselves on the RMAC throne again as well as getting into the regional tournament and perhaps beyond.

Photo by - Danny Holland Junior outfielder James Edwards left and senior first baseman John Burney are off to a hot start for the 2003 season. Edwards leads the team with .442 batting average and Burney is hitting .317.

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