STEPHENVILLE, Texas— Junior Camille Smith set new career-highs for kills, blocks and total points while Kasie Gilfert matched her with 19 kills but were not quite enough for the Colorado Mesa University Maverick volleyball team dropped a 5-set slugfest with 20^th-ranked and second seeded Texas A&M University-Commerce in the semifinal round of the NCAA Division II South Central Regional Tournament on Friday night.
 
The teams could not have been more even as each won 112 points in the 2 hour and 23-minute affair played here in top-seeded Tarleton State University's Wisdom Gym.  The 25-22, 24-26, 29-27, 19-25, 15-12 barn-burner eventually went to the Lions who improved to 30-5 while advancing to tomorrow's regional championship against the host TexAnns (31-4), who won in four sets over fourth-seeded Colorado School of Mines (24-6) in the somewhat anti-climactic second semifinal.
 
The Mavericks, who were the third seed, saw their Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Tournament winning season come to a close with a 24-7 mark while seeing their post-season run come to a close. 
 
The Mavericks had won five straight post-season and seven straight overall matches coming in and did not lose back-to-back matches all year.
 
Smith, a junior, finished her impressive night with 19 kills and nine blocks, three of which were solos, while hitting .359.  She also had 25 total points.
 
Gilfert, a redshirt sophomore who was named as RMAC and the region's Player of the Year, was nearly as impressive.  She finished with 19 kills and just two hitting errors on 34 swings, good for a .500 hitting percentage as she finished the year with a NCAA-leading and all-time CMU school-record .451 hitting percentage.  She also finished the campaign with 123 total blocks, a rally-scoring era (2001-Present) school record and led the RMAC with 413 total kills.
 
Smith, who surpassed her former career-highs of 14 kills and eight blocks in Friday's match, finished the year with 110 blocks and hit .367 throughout the campaign.
 
Meanwhile, senior libero Taylor Woods also had a phenomenal night, registering a season-high 34 digs while serving three aces.  She finishes the campaign with a career-high numbers of 557 digs and 48 aces and leaves the Maverick program with 2,080 career digs and 120 aces.  The dig mark is a rally-scoring era record and the second best in the program's entire history behind only CMU Hall of Honor inductee and RMAC Hall of Famer Amy Miller (2,542).
 
Woods also broke the Mavericks' all-time digs per set record, averaging nearly five (4.94) and departs the Maverick program as the second best server in the rally-scoring era.
 
The Mavericks also have impressive numbers from Katie Scherr and Allison Smith, who finished with nine kills each.  Scherr also had 16 digs and four blocks while Allison Smith recorded career-high 13 digs.
 
Setter Samantha Ritter also had 29 assists and 11 digs for her team best eighth double-double of the year, one more than senior outside hitter MacKenzie Edwards, a 2017 AVCA Honorable Mention All-American who could not play after suffering an injury on Friday afternoon in a 3-set opening round sweep of Dixie State University.
 
Texas A&M-Commerce had a balanced attack with Shelley Chapron leading the way with 18 kills and three blocks on .300 hitting.  Bina Nijkam had 17 kills and hit .355 while Jaryn Wacker put down 12 kills while recording 18 digs.  Libero Savnannah Rutledge had 36.
 
The Lions came out rocking and hit .375 in the opening set, which was tied at six occasions including at 16 before a 5-1 Lion run gave them control at 21-17.
 
Gilfert would come up with a solo block and had two kills around a Kerstin Layman service ace in a 4-2 Maverick spurt that closed the gap to 23-21 before Wacker answered back with two kills on the next three rallies to give her team the set.
 
The Lions then jumped out to a 6-0 lead in the opening set before the Mavericks chipped away at the deficit, eventually knotting it at 21 on a Smith kill.
 
The Lions then surged ahead 24-22 before the Mavericks won the final four points of the overtime set thanks to a kill by Gilfert, a Scherr and Camille Smith block, a Lion hitting error and a Camille Smith set-finisher. 
 
Smith had six kills and four blocks in that set alone as the Mavericks hit .282 in the frame and .213 overall, 62 points higher than the Lions.
 
The third set was the tightest of the match and included 10 ties and seven lead changes.
 
The Mavericks had a set point at 24-23 after a Camille Smith kill but could not convert as Chapron responded.  A hitting error then gave the Lions a set point at 25-24 before Camille Smith tied the frame at 25.
 
The Mavericks would go on to fight off two more set points at 26-25 and 27-26 before the Lions finally pulled out the set on kills by Nijkam and Celeste Vela.
 
However, the Mavericks did not give up and out-hit the Lions .267 to .060 in the fourth stanza.  It was tied at 10 before a Woods service spurt gave the Mavericks control at 14-10.  They would extend that lead to as many as nine at 21-12 on an 11-2 overall run and cruised to the victory, which sent the match to a fifth set.
 
The Lions got out to 3-0 and 6-2 leads in the decisive set although the Mavericks later responded with a 4-0 run with Ritter at the service line to take a 9-7 lead. 
 
However, Commerce rallied back with four straight points of their own to go up 11-9 before the teams exchanged the next four points.
 
A hitting error by Nijkam then made the score 13-12 in favor of the Lions, who called timeout.  They then won the set and the match with a Nijkam kill and a CMU setting error.