GUNNISON, Colo.— The Colorado Mesa University Mavericks claimed their 20th victory of the season and booked the No. 3 seed in next week's Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Volleyball Tournament with a comfortable 3-set (25-11, 25-16, 25-16) regular-season capping victory over rival Western Colorado University on Friday night here in the Mountaineers' Paul W. Wright Gymnasium.
The Mavericks hit .270 as a team and took advantage of 28 Mountaineer hitting errors to improve to 20-6 overall and to 15-3 in the RMAC, just one match shy of a share of the RMAC regular season crown, which was shared by the Colorado School of Mines and Dixie State University, who each won Friday night matches to finish the regular season with 16-2 conference marks.
The Mavericks will host sixth-seeded Colorado Christian (13-14, 11-7 RMAC) in the quarterfinal round of the RMAC Tournament on Tuesday at 7 p.m. in Brownson Arena. CMU swept the Cougars on Sept. 29 in the only regular season meeting of the year.
Mines is the No. 1 seed in the RMAC Tournament and will host Fort Lewis in the quarterfinal round. The Orediggers would also host the semifinals and championship match in Golden if they are able to defeat the Skyhawks. Dixie State, which could earn hosting rights if Mines were to lose lost, is the No. 2 seed and will take on UCCS with the winner of that match facing the winner of the Maverick/Cougar contest in one semifinal.
MSU Denver, which ended up tied with the Mavericks for third place in the RMAC standings, will host cross-town rival Regis in the 4-5 match-up on Tuesday.
The Mavericks have now won 20 matches in five different seasons under 14th year Head Coach
Dave Fleming, reaching that mark since going 29-4 in 2014. They now have ten 20-plus win seasons in their NCAA Division II history, which dates back to 1992. They also had nine 20-win campaigns in their NAIA days.
On Friday, national hitting percentage leader
Kasie Gilfert led the Mavericks with 11 kills and just one error on 14 swings and hit a career-high matching .714. She put six of those kills down in the third set. She also tallied five blocks and raised her season hitting percentage six more points to .459.
Meanwhile,
Camille Smith finished with nine kills while outside hitters
MacKenzie Edwards and
Katie Scherr chipped in six each.
Defensively,
Taylor Woods recorded a match-high 17 digs and will enter Tuesday's RMAC Tournament quarterfinal against No. 6 seed Colorado Christian just 10 shy of 2,000 for her career.
Setter
Ara Norwood added 18 assists and seven digs.
The Mountaineers (2-24, 1-17 RMAC) finished the season without a home win and were held to a negative .037 hitting percentage throughout the night. They were guilty of 11 hitting errors in the opening set and hit negative .121 in that frame before hitting zero as a team in the second and third frames.
Nine of Western's hitting errors were due to Maverick blocks as Smith (4) and Edwards (3) helped support Gilfert in that category.
The Mavericks had a 37-24 advantage in total kills and a 48-40 edge in digs while out-blocking the Mountaineers, 9-4. They also did not surrender a single service ace.
A 5-0 spurt that grew into a 16-4 run allowed the Mavericks to win the first set, which was sealed by back-to-back blocks by Edwards and Gilfert. They hit .360 as a team in that frame.
Edwards then broke a 10-10 second set tie with kills as the Mavericks gradually built a 21-15 lead while going on a 7-1 run to close out the frame on another Edwards kills.
Gilfert then took over in the third set converting for kills on all six of her attempts after being held to just five kills in the first two sets.
