GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— Seniors Lucas Martin and William Agritelley posted singles wins in the No. 4 and 6 flights, respectively, but were not enough for the Colorado Mesa University Men's Tennis team against MSU Denver in NCAA Division II South Central Regional action on Thursday afternoon at the Elliott Tennis Center.
 
The Roadrunners, ranked fifth in the region according to the Oracle/ITA Division II regional rankings, were too much for the Mavericks winning all three doubles matches and the other four singles affairs to take the 5-2 overall win. 
 
MSU Denver improved to 2-3 while the Mavericks, ranked seventh in the region, fell to 2-5 and are still looking for their first spring win.
 
They will have the opportunity to get that on Saturday when they host another regional rival in CSU-Pueblo (1-8) at 3:30 p.m., a change from the originally scheduled 9 a.m. start time.
 
"The guys seemed a flat.  We had a great warmup and seemed ready but slow starts with NCAA scoring just won't result in winning matches," Maverick Coach DanMacDonald said.
 
"We need to really focus on the first two points of every game.  We dug ourselves into too many holes and that is hard to overcome."
 
The Roadrunners won 6-3 at both No. 2 and No. 3 doubles and then claimed a No. 1 doubles win in come from behind fashion in a tiebreaker to seize the early momentum and the 1-0 lead in the team scoring.
 
The Mavericks then temporarily tied the score when Martin won his match, the first singles match to go into the books, over David Kijak, 6-3, 6-4.  However, the Roadrunners answered with a No. 1 singles win by Joey Tscherne over Max Lindqvist, 6-3, 7-6 (7-4) to seize the lead for good.
 
Agritelley later won his match over Kacey Walisundara, 6-1, 6-1.  He now leads the Mavericks with six singles wins this season and is 4-3 in duals.