GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— Freshman Sydney Leffler put down a match-high 16 kills while fellow outside hitter Holly Schmidt recorded an 11-kill, 11-dig double-double to lead a very balanced Colorado Mesa University volleyball team to a 4-set (25-17, 17-25, 25-15, 25-18) win over visiting Colorado Christian University in the quarterfinals of the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Tournament on Tuesday evening here in Brownson Arena.
 
The third-seeded Mavericks improved to 21-5 overall and will finish the 2021 season on a 9-match home-court winning streak after defeating the sixth-seeded Cougars for the sixth consecutive time.
 
Maverick middle blockers Savannah Spitzer and Tye Wedhorn also played significant roles in the win, CMU's 13^th in the last 14 matches overall.  Spitzer finished with 10 kills and hit .471 while Wedhorn put down nine kills on .333 hitting while adding a match-high five blocks.
 
Setter Sabrina VanDeList had 45 assists and whizzed past the 1,000 mark for the season.
 
Defensively, libero Kerstin Layman and defensive specialist Jordan Woods joined Schmidt, playing in her final career home match, with 11 digs. 
 
Ashton Reese also had six kills and four blocks while hitting .308 while coming off the bench on the right side.
 
The Cougars, who fell to 11-16, received ten kills from Libby Goodman and had 12 service aces, five of which were from Kristy Dick, to hang in the match until the Mavericks turned a bad stretch around with an early 7-0 third-set spurt.
 
That run, which featured two of CMU's eight blocks, helped the Mavericks reverse a 6-4 deficit into a 11-6 lead.
 
The Mavs never looked back and built as much as an 11-point advantage in the third set.  The Mavs then continued to roll and jumped out to a 7-2 fourth-set lead.
 
They still had a 5-point cushion in what ended up being the final frame at 13-8 and then used another 3-0 run on a Spitzer kill and back-to-back Schmidt kills to begin putting in what ended up being the final nails in the Cougars' proverbial coffin.
 
The Mavericks also looked strong in the early going, hitting .355 in the first set while holding the Cougars to a .087 clip. 
 
The second set was more of a back-and-forth affair as the Mavericks built a 12-9 lead only to see the Cougars go on a 11-2 extended run to surge in front, 20-14.  The Cougars had three service aces and two kills from Dick in that spurt and went on to win the frame, that saw the Mavs hit negative .029.
 
The Mavericks then hit above .400 in both the third (.407) and fourth (.438) sets and finished night with a big .282 to .106 advantage in team attack percentage.
 
The Mavs also doubled the Cougars in total kills, 58-29, while recording a big 47-30 advantage in total digs.  Both teams finished with eight blocks.
 
The Mavericks will now move on to the RMAC Tournament semifinals for the third time in four seasons and will have a chance of avenging their only loss over the last two months when they will take on No. 2 seed Colorado School of Mines (24-3), ranked tenth nationally, on Friday at 5 p.m. in Denver.  Mines dispatched No. 7 seed Western Colorado in straight sets during another RMAC Tournament quarterfinal on Tuesday in Golden.
 
Top seed and national No. 1 MSU Denver will host that match and their own semifinal after cruising to a 3-set win over New Mexico Highlands in the Auraria Events Center.  The Roadrunners will play CSU Pueblo for the second time in eight days after the fifth-seeded ThunderWolves pulled out a 5-set upset win over national poll No. 25 and fourth-seeded Regis in Denver.