GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— Winners of nine of their last 10 matches, the Colorado Mesa University volleyball team will face two more tough challenges this weekend as they wrap up a 4-match home-stand against defending Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Champion Regis University on Friday and Colorado Christian University on Saturday.
 
The Mavericks, who hold 11-4 overall and 6-1 RMAC records are a perfect 5-0 at home this season and will host the Rangers (10-6, 6-1 RMAC), ranked 24th nationally, at 7 p.m. on Friday before turning their attention to the Cougars (6-10, 4-3 RMAC), who will visit Brownson Arena on Saturday at 4 p.m. after a Friday night match in Gunnison.
 
A live stream of both matches can be seen on the RMAC Network and accessed at the link above.  Live statistics for both matches can also be found on the links above.
 
Approaching 1K
 
Senior outside hitter MacKenzie Edwards is nearing the 1,000 career kill milestone and will enter this weekend with 990 kills, just 10 shy of the milestone.  She has been in double-figures in seven of the Maverick's last 10 matches, a stretch that has seen CMU go 9-1.
 
Edwards had a match-high 13 kills while hitting .333 in Saturday's win over MSU Denver and tallied 11 kills and a career-best .455 hitting percentage in Friday's victory over Chadron State.  She also had 12 digs against the Eagles to record her 35th career double-double and fifth of the season.
 
The 2-time First Team All-RMAC selection and 2017 AVCA Honorable Mention All-American has recorded151 kills this season and ranks fifth in the RMAC while leading the team with her 3.36 kill per set average.

Edwards is looking to become just the sixth Maverick in the rally-scoring era (2001-Present) to record 1,000 career kills.
 
No. 4 is four away from No. 2
 
Maverick senior libero Taylor Woods, who wears uniform No. 4, recorded 25 more digs during the weekend sweeps over Chadron State and MSU Denver 1,779 for her career, just four shy of equaling Pam Glenn for the No. 2 spot on the Mavericks' all-time career digs chart.  Glenn had 1,783 in her 1992-95 career which was under the old "serve-to-score" format of the sport.
 
Woods became CMU's rally-scoring era (2001-Present) school-record holder for career digs in the Mavericks' third match of 2018 against Azusa Pacific.  She also had a season-high 32 in the season-opener against Cal State-L.A., the fourth-highest single-match total of her illustrious career.
 
She has had 20 or more digs five times this year and has been in double-figures in all 15 matches while racking up 256 digs to rank sixth in the RMAC with her 4.83 per set average.
 
Woods, the 2015 RMAC and AVCA South Central Region Freshman of the Year and 3-time overall All-RMAC selection, is also well above pace to smash Ashley Loftsgard's rally-scoring era digs per set record.  Woods is averaging 4.91 digs in 362 career sets to date.  Loftsgard, the former rally-scoring era record holder for total digs, averaged 4.03 in 392 sets played in her 2005-08 career.
 
Gilfert goes for 20
 
Maverick sophomore middle blocker and right side Kasie Gilfert recorded a career-high 20 kills while hitting an impressive .667 in Friday night's 3-set sweep of Chadron State.  She connected for kills on each of her first 11 swings and became the first Maverick this season to reach 20 kills in a single-match this season.  She also became the first RMAC player this year to put down 20 kills in a 3-set match.  Her .667 hitting percentage was the second-best single-match mark this season for any RMAC player with 12 or more kills in a match.
 
1 & 2 combo
 
The Mavericks continue to have the top two hitters in the RMAC in attack percentage.  Junior middle Camille Smith continues to lead the category and is now hitting .417 having made just 18 hitting errors while putting down 113 kills on 228 attempts.  She has hit over .600 in four different matches this season and has hit below .300 just twice.
 
She ranks tenth nationally in attack percentage.
 
Meanwhile, Kasie Gilfert hit .458 over the weekend to raise her percentage to .387, the 19^th best mark in NCAA Division II volleyball.  She leads the Mavericks with 168 kills and has hit at a .400 clip or higher in six different matches, including Friday's aforementioned .667 effort.  Gilfert also ranks 10^th in the RMAC for kills per set (3.17), third for blocking (1.08/set) and seventh in total points (3.70/set).
 
As a team, the Mavericks rank third in the RMAC with their .222 attack percentage.
 
400^th match was a success
 
Saturday's match against MSU Denver was the Mavericks' 400th under 14^th year head coach Dave Fleming, who earned his 250^th career win on Sept. 7 against CSU-Pueblo.  He has since won five more and now has a 255-145 career record, good for a .638 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 eight of their matches in straight-set sweeps this season posting 3-0 victories in six of their last 10 matches overall.  In fact, the Mavericks have dropped just one set in their five home matches this year to post a 15-1 home-court set win mark.  They Mavericks have surrendered 20 or more points in just four of those 16 home-court sets.
 
Double Double-Double weekend
 
Junior Samantha Ritter, who has been coming off the bench as the Mavericks' second setter as part of their 6-2 offense in each of the last five matches, recorded her first two double-doubles of the campaign over the weekend.  The double-doubles were the 13^th and 14^th of her career but just the fifth and sixth that came in 3-set matches.  On Friday, she had 22 assists to match her season-high while adding 10 digs in the sweep of Chadron State.  She then tallied 15 assists and a season-high 12 digs in the victory over MSU Denver.
 
Continued dominance of the Eagles
 
The Mavericks continued their dominance of Chadron State over the weekend and have now won 20 straight matches over the Eagles who have not won a head-to-head meeting since 2015.  Additionally, the Mavericks have not even dropped a set at home to Eagles since 2003, winning the last nine home matches by 3-0 decisions.
 
Getting revenge
 
Saturday's win over MSU Denver allowed the Mavericks to exact revenge on the Roadrunners, who had ended each of the last two campaigns in the post-season.  In 2017, the Roadrunners spoiled the Mavericks' senior night and final home match and then defeated them for the third time in 11 days in the quarterfinals of the RMAC Tournament.  MSU Denver had also ended the Mavericks' 2016 campaign in the quarterfinal round of the NCAA Division II South Central Regional and had won the previous six meetings between the two rivals.  Before 2016, the Mavericks had won the previous four meetings including the 2014 RMAC Championship in Grand Junction, which had been the last 3-0 sweep of the Roadrunners prior to Saturday.
 
Leading D
 
The Mavericks held MSU Denver to a .098 team attack percentage, which was their lowest of the entire 2018 season and in the process lowered their opponent attack percentage mark to .122, the best in the RMAC and the 27^th best defensive mark in the country.  The Mavericks have held eight different opponents to a sub-.100 team hitting percentage this season and have done so six times in their current 9-from-10 winning stretch.
 
Strong at the net
 
The Mavericks have recorded 125 total blocks a team this year, an average of 2.36 per set.  That average ranks them 15^th nationally and second in the RMAC behind only Dixie State, which also leads the country at 3.17 per set.
 
In 2017, the Mavericks finished just 13^th in the RMAC for blocking with a 1.53 per set average.  
 
Individually, Kasie Gilfert leads the team with 57 blocks and a 1.06 per set average, the third best mark in the RMAC.  Natalee Todd (51 blocks) and Camille Smith (44) have also contributed significantly to the Mavericks' net defense.  Todd stands sixth in the RMAC for blocking a 0.98 per set.
 
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.
 
Early Season honors
 
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.
 
About Regis
 
The nation's 24^th-ranked Rangers saw what had been a 6-match winning streak come to an end when they dropped a 5-set heartbreaker to No.4 Nebraska-Kearney in non-conference action on Tuesday night in Denver.  They have played a brutally tough schedule and are 10-6 overall and 6-1 in RMAC play, tied with the Mavericks for third place.
 
In 2017, they went 31-4 winning the RMAC Regular Season, RMAC Tournament and South Central Regional Tournaments before falling in the national quarterfinals.
 
Reigning RMAC Offensive Player of the Week Nikki Kennedy, selected as the RMAC's Preseason Player of the Year, is a major piece of the squad.  The 6-foot-4 middle hitter had 18 kills in Tuesday's match and has 208 this season to rank eighth in the RMAC with her 3.25 per set average.  She is also hitting .360 to rank third behind CMU's Smith and Gilfert and is second in the RMAC for blocking at 1.33 per set.
 
Sophomore Caityln Burroway, the 2017 RMAC Freshman of the Year, leads the team with 215 kills and is averaging 3.36 per set, fourth best in the RMAC.
 
Setter Silvia Basso leads the RMAC with 714 assists (11.33) while Kristina Schell is 10^th in the RMAC for digs at 4.19 per set.
 
The Rangers are hitting .237 as a team to rank second in the RMAC and lead the way in both kills (13.86) and assists (12.98) per set.
 
The Rangers have won the past five straight matches between the teams although the Mavericks had won three of the previous four and four of the previous six since 2013. 
 
About the Cougars
 
The Cougars enter the weekend, which they begin on Friday night at Western, with a 6-10 overall record.  However, they have won three straight matches to get over .500 in Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference play at 4-3 and are currently tied with UCCS for sixth place in the conference standings.
 
They finished fourth in the conference last year and were picked fourth in the Preseason RMAC Coaches' Poll as well.
 
Cali Bahnsen leads the team with 179 kills (2.84/set) and is hitting .204 while Jacey Johnson, Katie Henry and Ashley Drye are all averaging more than 2.00 kills per set as well.  Henry also has a .316 hitting percentage to rank second on the team behind Hope Baldrica, who has not played since Sept. 7.  Henry is eighth in the RMAC statistics for that category, which excluded Baldrica, who does not meet the minimum number of sets played.
 
Baldrica was a Preseason All-RMAC selection along with senior setter Kylee Wurster, who is averaging 9.91 assists per set to rank fifth in the RMAC.
 
Libero Mariela Gonzales is ninth in the RMAC for digs at 4.23 per set.
 
The Cougars won last year's meeting between the teams on Oct. 13 in Lakewood although the Mavericks had won the three previous meetings in 2014, 2015 and 2016 after the Cougars had won five straight between 2010-13.  Prior to that, the Mavericks had won 12 straight matches between 1995-2009 and hold a 15-6 series lead since 1995.
 
Up next
 
After this weekend's home matches, the Mavericks will head to South Dakota for a pair of RMAC matches at Black Hills State and South Dakota Mines on Oct. 5 and 6, respectively.  Those matches start a string of nine, where the Mavericks will play just two home matches.