Box Score Denver, Colorado- With #10 MSU Denver coming into Regis Fieldhouse tonight, the Regis men's basketball team knew to expect a battle from start to finish. During the first half, the Rangers were matching the Roadrunner's game play for play, but the second half proved to be much different. MSU Denver imposed their will to walk out with a 70-56 win.
At half the Roadrunner lead was just a mere three points. The Rangers looked as though they were going to be able to stick with MSU Denver for the entire 40 minutes. The Regis downfall was their inability to take care of the ball coughing up 22 total turnovers to MSU Denver's nine. Those 22 turnovers resulted in 31 points for the Roadrunners.
For the first seven minutes of the game, the Rangers were able to slow down the Roadrunners who were looking to jump out early. After MSU Denver went up by five from a Sam Porter layup, freshman center Chris Snyder cut the lead to just three with a layup out of a timeout. Although the Rangers kept biting back when the Roadrunners would strike, MSU Denver's Nicholas Kay threw down an emphatic dunk to extend their lead to nine with 8:35 to go in the half.
At this point the Rangers could have realized their fate and just played along with MSU Denver's game, but a Coach Porter team knows better than that. The Rangers fought their way back into the game bit-by-bit. Regis went into half time scoring four straight points from junior forward Tim Schulte and freshman forward Dexter Sienko making the score at break 29-26.
Unfortunately, once the two teams came back out from their locker rooms MSU Denver wasted no time ensuring they would end the night with a win. DeShawn Phenix's layup at the 16:24 mark put his Roadrunners up by seven. Just two minutes later, MSU Denver had extended their lead to eleven thanks to an Eric Rayer three pointer.
Senior forward Brett Hartshorne was able to cut the lead down to just five with a made lay-up and a made free throw after the foul at 11:37. However, that is the closest the Rangers could rope in the Roadrunners before MSU Denver went on a 19-4 run during an eight-minute stretch. From there the Rangers could only manage five more made free throws and a three-pointer to close out the game.
Sophomore Bryan Siekfer lead the Rangers in points with 16 and Harthorne contributed 14. Sienko lead the team with six rebounds and had six points off of 3-3 shooting.
Regis will be back on the road next week taking on Adams St. on Friday at 5:00 pm in Alamosa. After that they will visit Durango to face off with Fort Lewis for a 7:30 tip-off. The Rangers will have one more homestand on the 27th and 28th to close out their regular season.
