DENVER— The Colorado Mesa University volleyball team used an efficient and balanced attack to advance to the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Tournament semifinals for the third straight season with a 3-0 (25-12, 25-23, 25-13) quarterfinal round win over Colorado Christian University on Thursday afternoon here at MSU Denver's Auraria Event Center.
 
The nation's 17^th-ranked Mavericks, seeded third in the tournament, hit .432 as a team and took advantage of 14 Cougar hitting errors in the 3-set sweep while sweeping a 3-match season series from the sixth-seeded Cougars, who saw their season come to an end with a 15-13 record.
 
CMU also improved to 21-5 overall while setting up a re-match with 14^th-ranked and second-seeded Regis which got by South Dakota Mines in the tournament's first match in four sets.  The Mavericks and Rangers (21-6) played just five days ago (Saturday, Nov. 5) in Denver as Regis won in five sets to snap the Mavs' 12-match winning streak.
 
Now winners of 13 of their last 14 matches overall, the Mavs were led offensively by sophomore outside hitter Sydney Leffler, who had 13 kills on .417 hitting in Thursday's victory.  Middle blockers Tye Wedhorn and Savannah Spitzer were also both in double figures with ten kills apiece.  Wedhorn hit .643 while Spitzer had a .474 attack percentage.
 
All three were named to the Second Team All-RMAC unit earlier in the day.
 
Meanwhile, redshirt sophomore setter Sabrina VanDeList, named to the First Team All-RMAC squad for the third straight season, finished with 39 assists on a milestone-reaching afternoon.  She now has exactly 2,500 career assists becoming the eighth Maverick in program history to reach the figure.  VanDeList also became the first Maverick since Ali Svornic in 2015-16 to surpass the 1,000-assist mark in consecutive seasons and has 1,016 this year.  VanDeList also had a match-high nine digs and two service aces in Thursday's victory.
 
Elsewhere, First Team All-RMAC outside hitter Sierra Hunt finished with nine kills while hitting .500 while redshirt freshman Brooklyn Leggett recorded five kills in her second career start.
 
The Mavs' attack clicked throughout the match, but was especially strong in the first set when the Mavs hit .516.  They also hit .481 in the second set and a smooth .300 in the third.
 
They never trailed in the first or third but did have to battle through a tight second set, which featured 11 ties and five lead changes.
 
The Mavs led 10-7 and 12-10 earlier in the middle frame but did trail 15-14, 17-16 and 18-17 before rattling off the next four points to re-gain control.  Wedhorn had two kills in that run that put CMU ahead 21-18 before the Cougars re-gained their footing slightly, closing to within 22-21 with another ace.
 
The teams then exchanged points on kills by Leffler and CCU's Libby Goodman, the RMAC leader before Spitzer and Leffler put down more kills around a double touch call as the Mavs gained the 2-0 overall lead.
 
The Mavs then took a 4-0 lead early in the third set as the Cougars committed three successive errors, one of which was the result of a Maverick block by Wedhorn and Leggett and never looked back as they later used a 6-0 run with Maddi Foutz at the service line to build an unsurmountable 21-11 lead.
 
Meanwhile, the Cougars were guilty of nine hitting errors in the final set as they hit a negative .107 in that frame while being held to a .154 mark overall.  The Cougars did hit a strong .370 in the second set as Goodman had six of her eight kills while Lilly Woods put down five of her team-high nine overall.
 
Friday's RMAC Tournament semifinal will begin at 5 p.m.