GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— Assured of qualification for its third straight Pacific West Conference Championships, the Colorado Mesa University women's tennis team will look to move above .500 and complete season sweeps of their longest-standing in-state rivals when they host CSU Pueblo and MSU Denver in their final two duals of the regular season at the Elliott Tennis Center.
 
The Mavericks, 11-11 overall, will take on winless CSU Pueblo (0-10) in a non-conference match-up at 10 a.m. before facing fellow PacWest affiliate member MSU Denver (13-6) at 2 p.m.  In between, the Mavericks will honor three of their departing players during Senior Day festivities at 1 p.m.
 
The Maverick men will also take on MSU Denver that afternoon after recognizing two of their standouts.
 
Last Times Out
 
The Mavericks split their two matches last week, dropping a tight 4-3 neutral court decision to Hawai'i Hilo on Friday in Denver before coming home to defeat NCAA Division III Colorado College by a 6-1 margin on Saturday in their home opener.  The split kept the Mavericks at .500 overall heading into the last week of the season.
 
Issy Coman led the Mavericks, going 4-0 in the two duals.  She and doubles partner Macy Richards teamed up for a pair of wins, including in the top flight against CC, while Coman also posted a pair of straight-set wins in singles play, again playing in the No. 1 spot against the Tigers.
 
Six different Mavericks posted singles wins while two others claimed at least one doubles victory as the Mavericks were able to use nine different players throughout the weekend while resting both Halle Romero and Makenna Livingston against the Tigers.
 
Against the Vulcans, the Mavericks won two of the three doubles matches to seize the early 1-0 lead and still led 3-2 after Livingston and Coman delivered wins in the top two singles flights during the first wave.  However, the Vulcans won the No. 3 and 4 singles matches to stay in the dual before getting wins at No. 5 and 6 to complete the overall comeback victory.
 
The Mavericks also won both completed doubles matches against the CC Tigers and received straight-set wins from Coman, playing at No. 1 in place of Livingston, and Macy Richards, who moved up to No. 2 singles.
 
The Mavericks also won three of four 3-set matches in the third through sixth flight matches as junior Julianna Campos and European freshmen Delia Maier (Germany) and Jane Steur (Netherlands) all claimed victories.
 
Successful streaks
 
Maverick junior Issy Coman is on quite a winning streak, claiming victories in her last six singles matches and in her last six doubles victories with partner Macy Richards.  In addition, she has won every set during the winning streaks.
 
Coman began her winning streaks in the Mar. 20 dual against Dominican, taking out regionally-ranked Gina Dudley, 6-0, 6-4 and has given up two or less games in seven of her 12 singles sets, while winning three others in tie-breakers while splitting time between the No. 1 and 2 positions.
 
In doubles, she and Richards knocked off MSU Denver's Hanna Haber and Marie Cool, ranked seventh regionally, on Apr. 1 and have won their last three matches by 6-0, 6-0 and 6-1 margins.  All but the last of those victories, which came at No. 1, were in the second flight.
 
Coman has now won nine of her last ten singles matches and has a 12-5 overall record, including a 10-3 dual-meet mark.  She is 3-0 at No. 1 and 7-3 at No. 2 this year.  In doubles, Coman and Richards have gone 7-2 together since first paring up on Mar. 12 against Dixie State.  Coman leads the team in doubles wins with 12, just ahead of Richards and three other Mavs (Paige Furin, Livingston, Halle Romero), who all have 11.
 
Richards leads the team with 14 overall singles wins, including a 13-0 dual-meet mark in the top half of the lineup.
 
Doubles is key
 
The Mavericks have won the doubles point(s) in each of their last six duals and have gone on to record the team win in five of those duals.  One of those came on Apr. 1, when the Mavericks swept all three doubles matches to take a 3-0 lead in the 9-point Division III format.
 
The Mavs are 8-2 when winning the doubles point in the normal 7-point Division II format this season.
 
The Future is Bright
 
All three Maverick freshman on the roster all have winning overall and dual-meet records this season in both singles and doubles and have certainly taken advantage of their opportunities when presented, including against Colorado College on Saturday.
 
Delia Maier is 5-1 in singles play and has won all five of her dual-meet starts while Jane Steur is a solid 5-1 in No. 6 starts.  She is 7-4 overall and has won three straight matches.  Kristen Thomas has also fared well, going 7-6 in duals and 11-8 overall.
 
In doubles, Thomas is 8-5 overall and 5-4 in duals at the No. 3 spot with three different partners, including Maier and Steur.  Maier is 3-2 overall and is unbeaten in three No. 3 dual meet starts while Steur is 2-1 overall.
 
PacWest Qualification
 
The Mavericks were confirmed as one of the 12 teams to qualify for this year's PacWest Championships on Monday, not much of a surprise considering the Mavericks have been within the top-10 of all three sets of PacWest rankings released so far.
 
The Mavericks are ranked tenth in the latest set of rankings, announced in conjunction with the qualifiers.  Final tournament seeding, which will take the account the results of this weekend's matches, will be announced next Monday (Apr. 17) in advance of next week's tournament in Surprise, Arizona.  The events gets underway on Wednesday (Apr. 19).
 
The Mavs did drop a spot in this week's rankings after the small 4-3 defeat to Hawai'i Hilo, which flip-flopped with the Mavs into ninth of this week's rankings.
 
CMU is 3-6 against other PacWest foes and has wins over 11^th-ranked Dominican and seventh-ranked MSU Denver.  Biola is ranked eighth.
 
To see the complete rankings and qualifier announcement, click here.
 
"Senior" Day
 
In between their duals on Saturday, the Mavericks will recognize three departing players in advance of their final home matches.  The Mavs will honor fourth-year redshirt junior Halle Romero as well as sophomores Paige Furin and Macy Richards. 
 
Romero will be graduating this spring and plans to forgo her option of a fifth year of eligibility that would be on offer thanks to the NCAA's blanket COVID eligibility waiver after her freshman season was cut significantly short in 2020.
 
The Corpus Christi, Texas native leads all current Mavericks with 65 career victories entering the weekend and has reached double-figures for doubles wins in each of her three full seasons, posting a winning 41-37 doubles mark throughout her career.
 
Furin, a native of Henderson, Nevada, will be heading off to architecture school and enters this weekend with 44 victories in her two seasons as a Maverick, including a 21-13 singles record and 23-20 doubles mark.

Richards, who hails from Bountiful, Utah eclipsed the 50-win mark in just two years as a Maverick last weekend and will enter Saturday with 52 total wins, including a 29-26 record in singles.  She plans to go on a church mission next season.
 
Re-Matches
 
Saturday's duals will be re-matches of earlier April encounters on Colorado's Front Range.  On Apr. 1, the Mavericks edged MSU Denver, 4-3 in what was certainly their signature win of the season and the first in 15 tries over their rivals at the Roadrunners' Assembly Athletic Complex.
 
Halle Romero fought off five match points in her No. 4 singles third-set tie-breaker over Hannah Haber, delivering the dual-clinching team point after she and Makenna Livingston had knocked off Isabel Heras and Kinsey Fields, ranked 27^th nationally, in the ITA's doubles rankings at the time, by a 6-2 score.  Issy Coman and Macy Richards also won at No. 2 and 3 singles while the Mavericks won both completed doubles matches.
 
A day later, the Mavericks dominated CSU Pueblo, 7-0.  The Mavericks, who have won 38 straight duals over the Pack, lost just ten total games throughout the entire dual against the short-handed ThunderWolves, who fielded a lineup of just five players.
 
Coman and Richards won their No. 2 doubles match, 6-0 before Coman won both sets of her No. 1 singles match against Olivia Ivakoe, by 6-0 margins.  Delia Maier also won 6-0, 6-0 at No. 5 singles.
 
Know Your Foes
 
CSU Pueblo (Saturday, Apr. 15 – 10 a.m.)
 
The ThunderWolves will head into their season-finale with an 0-10 record.  They have been unable to win a match in each of their last three duals and played with four players on Apr. 8 against Hawai'i Hilo after fielding a lineup of five against MSU Denver (Apr. 1) and the Mavs (Apr. 2).
 
Alyssa Wells was the last Pack player to claim a win, doing so in a 3-set No. 4 singles match against Eastern Arizona College's Hannah Miller on Mar. 20.  Sonrisa Bustamante and Avery Soto have two singles wins each to lead the team.
 
Bustamante and Wells also have two doubles wins together.
 
MSU Denver (Saturday, Apr. 15 – 2 p.m.)
 
The Roadrunners are 13-6 on the season and have won three straight duals since falling to the Mavericks less than two weeks ago.  They held on to the No. 7 spot in this week's PacWest Rankings and are 3-2 against fellow PacWest members.
 
In singles, Kambra Roles leads the team with a strong 17-5 record.  She is 13-3 in duals. Having played everywhere from No. 2-6.  Monica Guarin is 9-1 and has won nine straight matches but has appeared in just six duals this spring, missing the Apr. 1 first match against the Mavs before playing later that day against CSU Pueblo.
 
Hanna Haber (11-10) and Marie Cool (11-11) also have double-digit singles wins.  They are also 13-5 together in doubles, playing mostly at No. 2, but posting a 3-0 record in spot No. 1 starts.
 
Kinsey Fields and Isabel Heras also have a 13-5 doubles record, including a 10-4 mark in the No. 1 flight.  They are now ranked 37^th in the ITA's National Doubles rankings.
 
In doubles, Kinsey Fields and Isabel Heras have posted an 11-4 record, including an 8-3 mark in duals at the No. 1 position.  Cool and Haber are also 11-4 overall and are 8-2 in duals.  They are 3-0 at No. 1 and 5-2 at No. 2.  Fields and Heras are also ranked 27^th in the ITA's National Doubles rankings, down seven spots from last week's No. 20 position.
 
Series Histories
 
MSU Denver holds a 31-28 lead in the all-time series, the most often played rivalry in CMU's tennis history.  They had won 14 straight matches over the last seven seasons before the Mavs stopped that run with the Apr. 1 win in Denver, which was the CMU's first in the rivalry last win in seven years since Apr. 15, 2016.
 
Three of the last four matches have now been decided by tight 4-3 margins.  The lone exception to that was when MSU Denver won 5-2 last year in Grand Junction.

Conversely, the Mavs have won 38 consecutive duals against CSU Pueblo and lead the overall series, 47-11.  The Mavs have won each of the last seven duals by 7-0 margins.  CSU Pueblo's last win in the rivalry was way back in 2006. 
 
Up Next
 
The Mavericks will learn their final seeding and first round opponent for the PacWest Tournament on Monday and will then play that first round match-up on Wednesday in Surprise, Arizona.