Caitlin Bopp and Rider try to hand Marist its first conference loss/ Photo by JOHN BLAINE

LAWRENCEVILLE — Caitlin Bopp can’t help herself.

She checks the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference standings daily.

“Just in case something happens to change,” she laughs.

Well, you can’t really blame her.

For the first time in a long time, the Rider women’s basketball team enters the final two weekends of play in the middle of a tight race for seeding rather than anchored to the bottom of the league table.

The Broncs (13-12, 8-6) are in fourth place, two games behind second-place Fairfield (which they swept this season), yet just two games in front of seventh-place Siena.

They boarded a bus Thursday for their final road trip of the season, which begins Friday in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., against Marist.

The Red Foxes (19-6, 14-0) have already clinched their 10th straight regular-season title and have beaten Rider 19 consecutive times. The Broncs’ last victory over Marist was during the 2002-03 season when they won 63-53 in Lawrenceville.

The Red Foxes have five players averaging over nine points per game, led by senior forward Elizabeth Beynnon (11.5 ppg). They’re forwards can step out and make 3s (Beynnon and Emma O’Connor — the other starting forward — both have over 40 threes) and everybody has the ability to blow by off the dribble. They’re 10-1 at home with the lone loss coming in overtime to Boston University back in December.

“They kind of have all-around everything,” Bopp said.

So what has to go right to pull the upset?

“It’s critical that you start the game well,” said coach Lynn Milligan, who’s guided the Broncs to 13 wins, the high-water mark during her time in charge. “They have great crowds and the crowd is into it right from the beginning, so you need to silence them and calm everybody down in the first four minutes.”

Milligan wants to play in four-minute mini-games.

“We want to be ahead after the first four minutes,” she said. “And then we’ll go from there.”

But if that doesn’t work?

“You get your doors blown off,” Milligan said.

The sixth-year coach feels like the time between meetings — Marist won 62-47 back on Jan. 4 — will play to her side’s advantage. Rider is a much better team now than it was then.

“It’s an advantage for the psyche of our kids,” said Milligan, whose club has won two in a row six of its last eight. “If we played Marist back-to-back or (with) a week or two (in between), I don’t know that we would beat them, but because there is so much time in between, we’re a lot more confident and playing better, that may play into our hand a little bit.”

Bopp’s role — along with MyNeshia McKenzie and Sironda Chambers, both of whom average over 13 points per game — will be significant if the Broncs are going to have a chance. The senior forward averages 9.4 points and 8.5 rebounds per game, and Milligan said it’s crucial that she gets some early touches because she can put pressure on Marist’s forwards and get them in foul trouble.

Bopp, as one of the elder statesman, relishes the opportunity. She wants to send a message to the Queens of the MAAC.

“Whenever we play them, I think they kind of write us off as an automatic win,” Bopp said. “I think we’re going to give them a real big surprise.”