Metro State men’s basketball players live on the same floor of the Regency Student Housing high-rise — the former Regency Hotel — in north Denver. The three Roadrunners with cars share them and give rides, which sometimes means jamming seven guys into freshman forward Sam Porter’s 1971 Volkswagen Beetle. “
The trunk’s in the front,” sophomore guard Brandon Jefferson pointed out the other day. “You can put guys there.”
Ah, the glamour of Division II basketball. NCAA watchdogs aren’t going to be writing down players’ license numbers in the parking lot and seeing if they can be traced to agents or boosters.
But at their level, the Roadrunners are elite, going into the division’s mandated Christmas shutdown with a 10-0 record and the No. 1 ranking in the National Association of Basketball Coaches poll. “When I look at that ranking, I just smile,” Jefferson said.
After beating Regis 78-71 on Saturday to improve to 5-0 in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference, the Roadrunners scattered for the holiday and won’t play again until a Dec. 30 home game against Colorado Mesa.
“Every team in the country in Division II is in the same boat,” second-year coach Derrick Clark said at the Regis Field House. “Everybody needs to freshen up mentally and physically. For us, it’s coming at the right time. I don’t worry about losing momentum because we just need to get better at the little things.”
In the history of the NABC poll, the Roadrunners previously were ranked No. 1 twice in 2004 and twice more in 2005.
“We don’t talk about it a whole lot, to be honest with you,” Clark said. “Our goal is to win the RMAC and go on from there. This is good recognition for our school, but it’s not something we sit around and think about all the time. It’s a sense of achievement at this point, but we’re looking at the long term.
“We play incredibly hard, we’re unselfish and on most days, we defend pretty well. I like the chemistry, and that’s one of the best things we have going. These guys like each other.”
Under Clark, a former assistant at Metro State, Colorado and Air Force, the Roadrunners are continuing the tradition that began under Mike Dunlap, now an assistant at St. John’s.
“He willed this program into something that was special,” Clark said. “We’re just trying to keep that going. We have eight new guys this year, and one thing I’ve tried to get across to them is that when people see that Metro State on your chest, you’re going to get their best game because of the work that’s been done by the players before us, and by Mike Dunlap, who left their legacy. It’s a burden we carry, but it’s a good one.”
Dunlap coached the Roadrunners to Division II national championships in 2000 and 2002 before joining the Nuggets as an assistant. He utilized an Australian pipeline, an approach Clark is embracing. This season, senior Paul Brotherson, from Sydney, starts at forward; freshman Nicholas Kay, from Tamworth, is a backup center; and highly touted guard Mitch McCarron from Alice Springs is sitting out the season after transferring in from Genesis Christian College.
But the leaders of the 2011-12 team are Jefferson, a speedy 5-foot-9 point guard from Flower Mound, Texas, and senior shooting guard Reggie Evans, from Rangeview High School in Aurora. Evans is averaging 17 points and Jefferson 14 in Clark’s deep rotation.
Evans, now 6-4, said he grew 8 inches in his final two years of high school, which helps explain why he didn’t get Division I offers. “But I’m fine with where I am,” he said. “We have championship banners in the gym, and I feel like if we work hard and keep pushing each other, we might have a chance to hang another one of those banners.”
Jefferson is the son of a Dallas-based American Airlines mechanic, Brian Jefferson, and he said one of the reasons he decided to come to Metro State was because Clark reminded him of his father. “They’re both hard-nosed,” he said, laughing.
It can be frustrating at times to be a successful team at a commuter school with 24,000 students — but also toil in relative obscurity, with tiny crowds for home games on the Metro campus.
“We’ve talked about that a little bit, and it’s always going to be that way,” Clark said. “Some of that is the demographics of being in Denver. You have a lot of options for what you can do on any given night. It’s nice to play in front of fans, but that shouldn’t be our whole motivation. We have an opportunity to compete every night. That’s more important than having people in the stands.
“We’ve accepted that a long time ago. When we were winning national championships, we had 200 people in the gym. But I do see some of the familiar faces, going on 12, 13 years. We do have some local people that continue to come.”
Nationally too, the school’s soon-to-be-changed name causes confusion.
“My close friends and people who follow me know where it is, in Denver,” Jefferson said. “But on my Facebook, when I said we were No. 1 in the country, people asked, ‘What school do you go to?’ I said Metro State and they said, ‘Where is that?’ That’s why I think we should change our name to Denver State.”
Terry Frei: 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com
Metro State women’s team terrific too
After the 2009-10 season, Metro State women’s basketball coach Linda Lappe moved to the University of Colorado. Lappe’s Buffaloes are 11-0 this season after defeating Creighton 52-49 in San Antonio on Wednesday with a buzzer-beating 3-pointer from freshman guard Lexy Kresl.
Lappe’s replacement at Metro State — Tanya Haave — has done exceptionally well too. Haave’s Roadrunners went into the Christmas break at 9-0 and ranked No. 3 in the nation in Division II. They beat Regis 70-64 last weekend.
The Roadrunners’ leading scorers:Senior guard Alyssa Benson, 12.8 average; freshman F Jenessa Burke, 10.8; senior guard Jasmine Cervantes, 9.6; senior F-C Caley Dow, 9.4.
