GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— After closing out the home portion of their regular season schedule with an 8-1 record and a weekend split, the Colorado Mesa University Volleyball team will now head out on the road for their final five matches of the regular season, starting this weekend in Southern Colorado.
 
On Friday, the Mavericks will visit Alamosa in the San Luis Valley to take on Adams State University in the Grizzlies' Plachy Hall for a 7 p.m. match.  The Mavericks will then head over Wolf Creek Pass to face Fort Lewis College in Durango on Saturday at 5 p.m. in the Skyhawks' Whalen Gymnasium.
 
For fans that cant not make the trip can view a live stream of both matches on the RMAC Network, accessible at the link above.  Live statistics for both matches can also be found on the links above.
 
Edwards reaches 1K milestone
 
Maverick senior MacKenzie Edwards reached the 1,000 career kill milestone late in the first set of the match against Dixie State on Friday night.  The 2-time First Team All-RMAC and 2017 AVCA Honorable Mention All-American finished that night with a match-high 11 kills and then recorded nine more in Saturday's 3-set sweep of Westminster.  She entered the weekend with 997 career kills and now has 1,017.
 
In reaching 1,000, she became just the sixth Maverick in the rally-scoring era (2001-Present) to reach the milestone and is one of just three active RMAC players with 1,000 or more.
 
Edwards has had an injury plagued season, which has kept her out of three whole matches and 15 total sets.  However, she is still second on the team in both total kills (178) and digs (143) and ranks 10^th in the RMAC statistics for kills per set at 3.02.  She also paces the squad with five double-doubles.
 
Edwards led the RMAC in kills per set last year at 4.10.
 
Tight at the top and still in control
 
Results from last weekend certainly tightened the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference title chase.  The Mavericks, who are 16-5 overall, are now in a tie for second place in the conference standings at 11-2 but still control their own destiny for at least a share of the RMAC regular season crown.  The Mavericks and Dixie State, which is the only team to have beaten the Mavericks in conference play, are just a match behind the Colorado School of Mines, which stands at 12-1 in conference play.  The Orediggers dropped their first conference match of the campaign in four sets at home to Colorado Christian on Friday but rebounded for a 4-set home win over Regis in Golden on Saturday.
 
CMU visits Golden on Oct. 27.
 
Meanwhile, MSU Denver is now in fourth place in the RMAC standings at 10-2 with a game in hand while Regis is fifth at 10-3.  UCCS and Colorado Christian are tied for sixth at 8-5 and still have remote chases of claiming the RMAC title.
 
Dogfight for No. 8
 
The RMAC standings are just are even tighter for the all-important eighth place position, which is required to qualify for the post-season tournament.  Both of CMU's opponents this weekend are in a dog fight for that spot with Fort Lewis currently holding down the No. 8 position with a 6-7 record after winning their last two and five of their last seven matches.  Adams State is just a match behind at 5-8 with Chadron State sandwiched in between at 5-7.
 
Westminster (5-8), Black Hills State (4-9) and New Mexico Highlands (4-9) are also very much in the hunt while CSU-Pueblo (2-11), South Dakota Mines (1-12) and Western (1-12) are all but eliminated.
 
Just one win to clinch, but looking for a home match
 
The Mavericks, who have won 13 of their last 15 matches, need just one more win to clinch a RMAC Tournament spot for the seventh straight year.
 
However, the Mavericks will need to continue to push forward to earn the right to host a RMAC Tournament quarterfinal match on Tuesday, Nov. 6.  The top four teams in the final regular season standings will have that right.  The top remaining seed after the quarterfinal round will then host both semifinals and the championship match on Nov. 9 and 10, respectively.
 
Gilfert continues to lead the country
 
Maverick sophomore middle blocker and right side Kasie Gilfert continues to lead the NCAA Division II statistics in hitting percentage at .438.  She had an off night on Friday with just five kills and four but responded in a big way on Saturday to record 16 kills while hitting a season-best .714 in Saturday's 3-0 sweep of Westminster.
 
Gilfert has recorded 267 total kills, an average of 3.61 per set which ranks her second in the RMAC, and has committed just 49 hitting errors on 498 total attempts.
 
Julianne Miller of Azusa Pacific is second in the country at .436 on 369 total attempts while Shelley Chapron of Texas A&M-Commerce ranks third at .418 on 419 total attempts.
 
Gilfert has the most kills of any of the 12 players nation-wide currently hitting over .400.
 
Two of the Top 4
 
Meanwhile, Maverick junior middle Camille Smith continues to rank second in the RMAC and is now fourth nationally with her .414 attack percentage.  She has 164 kills and just 26 hitting errors on 333 attempts this season after hitting a combined .343 with 16 kills last weekend. 
 
She has hit over .600 in four different matches this season, including at .769 against Cal Poly Pomona while hitting below .300 just three times.
 
As a team, the Mavericks rank third in the RMAC with their .226 attack percentage.
 
The Push for 2,000 continues
 
Maverick senior libero Taylor Woods, who is already the Mavericks' rally-scoring era (2001-Present) for career digs is now in search of the 2,000 career dig milestone.  She had 33 more digs over the weekend to raise her total to 1,886 career digs, just 114 shy of 2,000.
 
Woods will need to average 22.8 digs per match to reach the milestone by the end of the regular season.  However, that needed pace would be lowered, perhaps significantly, depending on how many post-season (RMAC and NCAA Tournament) games the Mavs may qualify for.  Thus far in 2018, Woods is averaging 17.28 digs per match although 13 CMU's 21 matches have only gone three sets.  She has averaged 18.13 digs per match thus far in her career.
 
Woods has had 20 or more digs seven times this year while finishing in double-figures in all 21 matches of the campaign.  She has racked up 363 digs this season and ranks third in the RMAC with her 4.91 per set average.
 
She is also averaging 4.92 digs per set throughout her career, which would smash the current rally-scoring era school record of 4.03, set by Ashley Loftsgard in her 2005-08 career.
 
Woods is also on pace to break CMU's all-time record for digs per set/game, a mark currently held by Lauren Freeman at 4.84, who played for the Mavs in 1992 and 1993.
 
Only Amy Miller, a CMU Hall of Honor inductee (2005) and 2011 RMAC Hall of Fame, has more career digs than Woods.  Miller set the all-time school-record of 2,542 from 1991-94, in a time when squads played under the side-out scoring system and typically played significantly more matches than they currently do.
 
As an example, the Mavericks played 51 matches in 1991 and 45 in 1994.  They have just 26 regular season matches on the schedule this year and would only play 35 even if they were to advance all the way to the championship match of both the RMAC and NCAA Tournaments.
 
Great Leadership
 
Dave Fleming is in in 14^th year as the Mavericks' head coach and earned his 250^th career win on Sept. 7 against CSU-Pueblo.  He and the Mavericks have since won ten more matches. He now has a 260-146 career record, good for a .640 career winning percentage.
 
Fleming took over the helm of the program in 2005 and is just the fourth head coach in the program's 34-year history.  He has guided the Mavericks to six NCAA Division II National Tournament berths, a 2014 RMAC Regular Season and Tournament titles and three RMAC West Division crowns.  The Mavericks have had winning seasons in all but one of his years with the program and have reached the 20-win mark four times.
 
Still Sweeping
 
The Mavericks have won 12 of their matches in straight-set sweeps this season posting 3-0 victories in ten of their last 15 matches overall, including in four of their last five.  The Mavericks are 12-1 in 3-set matches this season and have only been swept once.  That 12-1 3-set mark is the best in the RMAC.
 
Blocking their way to success

The Mavericks recorded seven blocks in each of their matches over the weekend and now have 180 on the season, an average 2.43 per set.  That mark, still ranks them 12^th nationally and second in the conference behind only national leader Dixie State at 3.09.
 
The Mavericks are on pace to have the program's best blocking season since 2003, when they averaged 2.57 blocks per set.
 
In 2017, the Mavericks finished just 13^th in the RMAC for blocking with a 1.53 per set average.  They recorded 148 team blocks that year.  This year's edition of the Maverick squad is already 32 blocks ahead of last year's squad and still has five regular season matches left.
 
Individually, Kasie Gilfert leads the team with 77 blocks while Camille Smith is right behind with 75.  They rank third and fourth in the RMAC with their respective 1.04 and 1.01 per set averages.  Natalee Todd has also contributed significantly to the Mavericks' net defense with 63 total blocks.  Todd stands just outside the RMAC's top 10 with her 0.86 per set average.
 
Leading D
 
The Mavericks held Dixie State (.150) and Westminster (.033) to a combined .105 hitting percentage last weekend and in the process lowered their season-long opponent attack percentage to .121 (.12117), a mark that continues to lead the RMAC by fractions of a point over Dixie State, which is also holding opponents to a .121 (.12133).  The Mavericks now rank 17^th in the country for opponent hitting percentage, five spots higher than when they sat 22^nd last week.
 
The Mavericks have held opponents to a sub-.100 team hitting percentage 11 times this season and have done so nine times in their current 13-from-15 winning stretch. 
 
Clipping the Griffins
 
They Mavericks held Westminster to just 21 total kills in Saturday's 3-set win over the Griffins and held them to a combined .039 attack percentage in the two meetings this season.  The Mavericks have now won all five all-time meetings with Westminster in Grand Junction and have won seven straight matches against them, all in straight sets.  CMU is 9-1 all-time against the Griffins.
 
Pre-Season Picks
 
The Mavericks were picked to finish fifth in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference this year, according to the conference preseason coaches' poll.  They received 173 points in the polling of the conference's 16 head coaches after their 17-10 (11-7 RMAC) 2017 season that saw them finish sixth in the conference's regular season standings.
 
Honors thus far
 
CMU also had two Preseason All-RMAC selections in seniors MacKenzie Edwards, a returning AVCA Honorable Mention All-America outside hitter, and libero Taylor Woods.  Edwards was a First Team All-RMAC selection last year while Woods earned second team honors for the second straight year in 2017.  Woods was also recognized as the RMAC's Defensive Player of the week on Aug. 27 for her efforts at the Concordia Invitational.
 
Meanwhile, Kasie Gilfert was named to the all-tournament team at the Concordia Invitational while both Gilfert and MacKenzie Edwards earned all-tournament honors at the Rockhurst Volleyball Classic.
 
Gilfert was then named as the RMAC Offensive Player of the Week on both Oct. 3 and 10 and was also tabbed as PrepVolleyball.com's Non-Division I National Player of the Week honor on Oct. 3 for her efforts in the Mavericks' Sept. 29 and 30 victories over then nationally-ranked Regis and Colorado Christian the weekend before.
 
About Adams State
 
The Grizzlies will enter Friday's match in Plachy Hall with 8-13 overall and 5-8 RMAC records and riding some positive momentum after going 2-0 with 4-set wins over both South Dakota Mines and Black Hills State last weekend.  The Grizzlies are 4-3 at home this year.
 
Redshirt junior setter Rachael Ringler was named as the RMAC Setter of the Week on Monday for her performance against the South Dakota schools which saw her record a pair of double-doubles.  She had 46 assists and 14 digs against South Dakota Mines and then recorded 56 assists and 11 digs in the win over Black Hills State.  She ranks fourth in the RMAC for assists per set (10.27) and is the only Grizzly to be ranked in the RMAC's top 10 for any of the six major statistical categories.
 
As a team, the Grizzlies rank seventh in the RMAC hitting percentage at .184, eighth for kills per set (12.22) and are eighth in blocking at 1.58 per set but sit in the bottom half of the other statistical categories, including digs, which they sit last.
 
Junior outside hitter Hannah Goddard leads the Grizzlies with 223 kills, an average of 2.82 per set, while sophomore middle hitter Shannon Mulkey is just behind with 211 kills (2.64 per set).  Mulkey also paces the team in blocks with 57 and is the top regular hitter with her .264 attack percentage.
 
Sophomore Mackenzie Swanson leads the team with 317 digs, an average of 3.91 per frame.
 
The Mavericks have won six of their last seven encounters with the Grizzlies, taking last year's match-up on Sept. 29 in five sets in Grand Junction.  CMU's MacKenzie Edwards finished that match with 28 kills while Katie Scherr finished with a career-high 15 kills while recording 12 digs to register one of her six double-doubles of 2017.
 
About Fort Lewis
 
The Skyhawks will enter this weekend, which begins with a Friday night home match with Western, as one of the hotter teams in the RMAC.  They have won five of their last seven after a 1-9 start and currently occupy eighth place in the RMAC standings, which would get them into the RMAC Tournament if the regular season were to end today.  They are 6-11 overall and 6-7 in RMAC play after having only played one early season non-conference tournament.
 
Senior outside and right side hitter Hailey Christiansen leads the team with 181 kills throughout the slightly abbreviated schedule, an average of 2.97 per set.  She is also second in total digs with 239, an average of 3.92 per set. 
 
Meanwhile, junior middle blocker Bailey Longacre is second on the team with 151 kills, a 2.48 per set.
 
Freshman outside hitter Tye Wedhorn leads the Skyhawks with her .365 hitting percentage and is also averaging more than two kills per set at 2.11.
 
Sophomore setter Bella Valdez is also ranked fourth in the RMAC for service aces per set with a 0.35 per set average but has played in just 31 sets thus far.  The Skyhawks rank last in the RMAC for team service aces (53) but pace the conference in digs per set (16.89), thanks in large part to Christiansen and Megan Graefe, who has 241 digs and a 4.30 per set average.
 
The Skyhawks stole a 5-set win from the Mavericks in 2017 coming from two sets down.  That and another 5-set win in Durango in 2013 are the Skyhawks' only two victories in 13 total meetings so far this decade.
 
Edwards recorded a career-high 33 kills in last year's match-up with the Skyhawks, just one shy of CMU's all-time single-match school record.
 
Up next
 
After this weekend's matches, the Mavericks will continue a 5-match road trip on Friday, Oct. 26 at UCCS and Saturday, Oct. 27 at the Colorado School of Mines.  The Mavericks then close out the regular season on Friday, Nov. 2 at Western.