GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— The Colorado Mesa University volleyball team will close out the regular season on Friday at rival Western Colorado University and still has a chance at winning a share of the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference title.
 
First serve in the Mountaineers' Paul W. Wright Gymnasium in Gunnison is slated for 7 p.m.  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.
 
The Mavericks, who are 19-6 overall and 14-3 in the RMAC, are coming off a weekend road sweep that saw them defeat UCCS in three sets on Friday in Colorado Springs before taking down now RMAC co-leading Colorado School of Mines in five sets on Saturday in Golden. 
 
Western will enter what will be their final match of the season with 2-23 overall and 1-16 RMAC records and will be hoping to end the season on a high note after dropping each of their last six matches.
 
Fans that can not make the trip can view a live stream of both matches on the RMAC Network, accessible at the link above.  Live statistics for the match can also be at on the link above.
 
Title Hopes
 
Thanks to their victory on Saturday at Mines, the Mavericks still have a chance at winning a share of the RMAC regular season title.  They would need a victory over Western on Friday combined with Mines and Dixie State losses.  Mines hosts seventh place UCCS (10-7 RMAC) while Dixie State is home to 5-12 Westminster, which is tied for 12^th, on Friday.  Both of those matches also begin at 7 p.m.
 
MSU Denver, which is currently 13-3 in the RMAC and in fourth place, could also earn a share of the crown with a pair of wins over Chadron State this week combined with Mines and Dixie State losses.  They Roadrunners host the Eagles in back-to-back matches on Thursday and Friday evenings in Denver.
 
CMU last won the RMAC's regular season title in 2014, sharing it with Mines.  The Mavericks earned the No. 1 seed and hosting rights for that year's RMAC tournament on tie-breaking procedures and went on to win it before advancing to the championship match of the NCAA Division II South Central Regional Tournament, which they also hosted.
 
Home Date Guaranteed
 
Saturday night's victory also guaranteed the Mavericks the right to host a RMAC Tournament quarterfinal match on Tuesday (Nov. 6).  The top four seeds host those quarterfinal round matches against the No. 5-8 seeds.  The quarterfinal winners then move on to the campus of the highest remaining seed for the semifinal and championship matches on Nov. 9-10.
 
Due to the RMAC tie-breaking procedures, the Mavericks cannot be the No. 1 seed but can end up as the No. 2, 3 or 4 seed.  With a victory on Friday, the Mavericks would finish no lower than the third seed.
 
The Mavericks, who have qualified for the RMAC Tournament in each of the last seven years since 2012, have begun the last two tournaments away from home.  They have won their last four RMAC Tournament home matches winning a 2015 quarterfinal over Regis after winning the tournament in 2014.
 
Regional Rankings
 
The Mavericks moved up two spots to fifth in the second set of NCAA Division II South Central Regional rankings that will eventually determine the at-large selections and seeding for the regional portion of the NCAA Division II Tournament.  Those new rankings were released Wednesday.
 
The Mavericks had sat seventh in the initial set of rankings but moved ahead of both Angelo State and Regis following their two victories last week.
 
Tarleton State continues to hold down the No. 1 spot and the inside track to host the regional ahead of Lone Star Conference rival Texas A&M-Commerce.  Mines remained in the No. 3 spot despite the Mavericks' win against them on Saturday night, while Dixie State moved up a spot to fourth.
 
Angelo State, which had been in fourth, is now sixth while Regis also slipped a spot to seventh.  MSU Denver, West Texas A&M and Lubbock Christian, which leads the Heartland Conference standings, all remained steady in the No. 8-10 spots.
 
The conference tournament champions all receive automatic berths into the 8-team regional while the other selections and seeding will be based on the final regional rankings, which will be updated next Wednesday (Nov. 7) and then for a final time on "Selection Sunday" at 8 p.m. MST on Sunday, Nov. 11.
 
The Mavericks are looking for their eighth NCAA Tournament appearance in school history.  If they are selected, it would mark the fourth time in the last five years.
 
Back in the polls
 
This weekend's sweep and especially Saturday's victory at Colorado School of Mines, has helped put the Mavericks back in the "others receiving votes" category of this week's AVCA Division II Coaches Poll.  The Mavericks have been in that category four different times this season, including the preseason.  CMU has five points and is one of three RMAC teams in the category along with Mines (43 points) and Dixie State (13).
 
All but one of the Maverick's six losses have come against teams currently in the top 25 or in the others receiving votes category.  The Mavs also have three combined wins against those teams.
 
Making history
 
Maverick redshirt sophomore Kasie Gilfert made school-history on Tuesday as she became CMU's first-ever AVCA Division II National Player of the Week.  She had also been selected as the RMAC's Offensive Player of the Week for the third time in October on Monday.
 
Gilfert put down 44 kills, an average of 5.50 per set, and hit at a combined .565 clip in the Mavericks' wins over UCCS and Mines.  She also tallied nine blocks (1.12/set) and 49 total points (6.12/set) over the weekend.
 
Gilfert is the first RMAC player in six seasons to earn the national honor and increased her lead in the NCAA Division II statistics for hitting percentage to 30 points.  She is now hitting .453 this season and has tallied five 20-plus kill efforts.
 
She had 20 kills and three blocks while hitting .643 in Friday's 3-set sweep of UCCS before registering 24 kills and six blocks, both of which were match-highs, while hitting .512 in Saturday's 5-set win at Mines.
 
She leads the RMAC in hitting percentage by 66 points over Maverick teammate Camille Smith and also ranks second in the RMAC for both kills (3.81) and total points (4.40) per set.  She also stands third in the RMAC for blocking at 1.05 per set.
 
Leading the nation and the nation
 
Gilfert is now leading the nation in hitting percentage in a couple or regards.  As mentioned above, she is leading the NCAA Division II statistics by 30 points over Sascha Dominique of Cal State-San Bernardino.
 
Gilfert also leads all three divisions of the NCAA.  NCAA Division III leader Julianne Malek of Washington-St. Louis is also hitting .453 but Gilfert has a slight advantage when calculating to more decimal places (.45339 to .45319). 
 
NCAA Division I leader Sharonda Pickering of Florida Gulf Coast is hitting .442.
 
The NAIA statistical leader is Priscilla O'Dowd of Midland (Neb.).  She is hitting .441.
 
Gilfert has recorded 347 kills while committing just 60 errors in 633 attempts and has hit at a .500 clip or higher in 11 different matches this season.
 
Teammate Camille Smith ranks 16^th in the NCAA Division II statistics for hitting percentage at .387.
 
Gilfert's .453 clip would be the ninth best in NCAA Division II since 2008, when college volleyball moved to a 25-point set format.
 
School-record pace
 
Both Gilfert and Smith are on pace to possibly break the Maverick record for single-season hitting percentage of .389, which is currently held by Phyllis Jennings and set way back in 1987.  Melissa Hess holds CMU's rally-scoring record of .371, which she set in 2014.
 
Looking for 20
 
With a win on Friday, the Mavericks would reach the 20-win mark for the fifth time under 14^th year Head Coach Dave Fleming and for the 10th time in their NCAA Division II history, which dates back to 1992.  The Mavericks also had nine 20-win seasons in their NAIA history. 
 
The Mavericks last won 20 matches in 2014 when they went 29-4 after a 21-8 2013 season.  The Mavericks also won at least 20 matches in 2010 (20-9) and 23 in 2005 (23-7), Fleming's first season.
 
Digging towards 2,000
 
Maverick senior libero Taylor Woods, who is already the Mavericks' rally-scoring era (2001-Present) for career digs recorded 34 more over the weekend in  her continued drive towards the 2,000 career dig milestone.  She had a match-high 18 in Friday's 3-set win at UCCS before sharing team-high honors with 16 in Saturday's victory at Mines.
 
Woods now has 1,973 career digs, just 27 shy of the milestone.  She ranks 12^th amongst active Division II players and leads all active RMAC players in that category.
 
Woods has had 20 or more digs nine times this season while finishing in double-figures in all 25 matches of the campaign.  She has also been in double-figures in all but one of her last 64 matches and but five of her 108 career matches.
 
Woods has racked up 450 digs this season and ranks third in the RMAC with her 4.95 per set average, the most of any player on a RMAC Tournament qualifying squad.
 
She is also averaging 4.93 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.
 
Aces galore
 
Woods also had a career-high seven service aces in Saturday's victory at Mines, the highest single-match total of any player in the RMAC this year.  The seven aces were also the most for any Maverick in 10 years since Gabrielle Lovato had a 9-ace effort against Adams State on Oct. 24, 2018 and a 10-ace effort earlier that season.
 
In the process, Woods became just the third Maverick in the rally-scoring era (2001-Present) to surpass the 100 career service ace mark. She now has 104, including a career-high 32 this season.  Only Drew Choules (153; 2004-07) and Megan Rush (107; 2009-12) have more.
 
Woods moved up to third in the RMAC for service aces per set (0.35).
 
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 13 more matches. He now has a 263-147 career record, good for a .641 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.
 
Get out the brooms
 
The Mavericks have won 13 of their matches in straight-set sweeps this season.  The Mavericks are 13-1 in 3-set matches this season and have only been swept once.  That 13-1 3-set mark is equal to the best (Colorado School of Mines) in the RMAC.
 
Blocking their way to success 

The Mavericks recorded 16 more blocks over the weekend, reaching double figures for the ninth time when they tallied 10 against Mines.  The Mavericks now have 213 team blocks this season, an average of 2.34 per set. 
 
They rank 18^th in the nation and second in the conference behind only national leader Dixie State, which is averaging 3.04 per set.
 
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 49 blocks ahead of last year's squad and still has at least four matches left in the campaign.
 
Individually, Kasie Gilfert leads the team with 96 blocks while Camille Smith is right behind with 84.
 
Gilfert had a match-high six in Saturday night's win over Mines and maintained her average of 1.05 per set to rank third in the RMAC.    Smith is averaging 0.92 per set to stand eighth in the RMAC.
 
Both have a realistic shot at becoming the first Mavericks to reach 100 blocks in a single season since Abby Ney (103) and Melissa Hess (102) both reached triple figures during CMU's 2014 RMAC Championship and NCAA Regional Finalist squad.
 
Lauren Powley holds the Mavs' rally-scoring era single-season record of 116, which she set in 2003.
 
Tough D
 
The Mavericks held UCCS to a .091 hitting percentage in Friday's 3-set sweep and now have a season-long opponent hitting percentage of .130, a mark that ranks the Mavericks second in the RMAC and 26^th in the country.
 
The Mavericks have held opponents to a sub-.100 team hitting percentage 12 times this season and have done so ten times in their current 17-from-20 winning stretch. 
 
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 Oct. 1, Oct. 8 and Oct. 29 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.   She then was selected as the AVCA Division II Player of the Week on Tuesday.
 
About Western Colorado
 
The Mountaineers will enter their final match of the season with 2-23 overall and 1-16 RMAC Records and will be looking for their first home win of the campaign.  They have lost six straight matches since claiming their only RMAC win at South Dakota Mines on Oct. 6.
 
Cammi Baumann is sixth in the RMAC for service aces per set at 0.31 while setter Hanna Hendrickson ranks 10^th in the RMAC for assists per set (7.54).  They are the only two players ranked amongst the RMAC's top 10 in any of the six statistical categories.
 
As a team, they have the fewest kills of any squad in the RMAC (758, 9.02 per set) and are last in the RMAC for hitting percentage at .076.  They also rank last in the RMAC for opponent hitting percentage at .237 but are closer to the middle of the pack for both aces (11^th, 1.08/set) and blocking (13^th, 1.43/set).

Kristen Companik has a narrow lead for the team lead in kills with 149 while Kathleen Kasel, one of three seniors on the roster, is second with 143 while leading the team in total points with 178.  Kasel leads the team with 48 blocks.
 
Baumann, another senior, has 289 digs, good for an average of 4.19 per set.
 
The Mavericks have also won 11 straight matches over the Mountaineers dating back to 2013 and have lost just one of the last 24 meetings.  Western's lone win in the stretch came in a 5-set battle in Brownson Arena on Oct. 26, 2012.
 
The Mavericks won a 3-0 decision on Sept. 11 of this year in Brownson Arena.  MacKenzie Edwards had 14 kills while Taylor Woods had 16 digs in that match that saw the Mavericks record 11 blocks while holding the Mountaineers to a negative .010 hitting percentage.  Natalee Todd was in on seven of those blocks.
 
Up next
 
After Friday's matches, the Mavericks will learn their seed and quarterfinal round opponent for the RMAC Tournament, which begins on Tuesday, Nov. 6 at 7 p.m. in Brownson Arena.