GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— The Colorado Mesa University women's tennis team will hope to cap a strong season with their first Pacific West Conference Championship Tournament wins this week at the Surprise Tennis Center in Surprise, Arizona.
The Mavericks, 15-11 overall, will be making their fifth straight appearance since joining the conference as affiliate members in 2021, but have so far been unable to win any duals, a trend they hope to reverse this season.
The Mavericks, who went 6-3 against PacWest foes this season, including a 2-3 mark against other conference tournament qualifying teams, will be the No. 7 seed and will face tenth-seeded Hawai'i Hilo (7-11) in the opening round on Wednesday morning at 9 a.m. local time (10 a.m. Mountain Daylight).
More information about the tournament
can be found here.
Live scoring
can be seen here.
Tournament Format
The 12-team tournament will continue through Saturday. The winner will receive the league's automatic bid into the NCAA Division II Tournament. Three other PacWest teams will also be selected at-large based on the regional rankings, which are due out for the first time on Wednesday.
The top four seeds will have first round byes and will play winners of the four first round matches on Thursday morning. The eight teams left at that stage will then play championship and consolation semifinals on Friday morning. The title match as well as the third, fifth and seventh place encounters are all on Saturday morning.
All of the women's duals in the main bracket will begin at 9 a.m. local time (10 a.m. MDT).
The teams that fall in the opening round on Wednesday morning will play a single consolation match on Thursday evening at 5 p.m. local time (6 p.m. MDT) to conclude their season.
The complete bracket can be seen here.
Last Time Out
The Mavs ended their regular season on a high note and milestone reaching day on Sunday, when the Mavs blanked CSU Pueblo, 7-0 at the Pueblo City Park Tennis Courts. They had dropped tight 4-3 decisions to MSU Denver and Colorado College earlier on the weekend after sweeping all three teams at home on the previous weekend.
Recaps of all three matches on Colorado's front range can be found here:
Milestone weekend
Maverick senior
Makenna Livingston reached the 100-win milestone on Sunday when she and doubles partner
Delia Maier won their No. 2 doubles match over CSU Pueblo's Yelena Travica and Malaya Pendon, by a 6-1 margin.
Livingston then defeated Marta Garcia, 6-2, 6-1 in the top flight singles match to claim her 50
th career singles win.
On Saturday, Livingston won her 50
th career doubles match alongside Maier against Colorado College.
The Huntington Beach, California native is just the 14
th Maverick woman to have ever recorded 100 or more career wins and is one of just 13 to have 50 or more wins in both disciplines. She is just the 15
th Maverick to reach the 50-win mark in singles.
Livingston, ranked 67
th in the latest ITA NCAA Division II singles rankings (Apr. 9) has a 14-14 singles record this season, including her 12-12 mark in the No. 1 spot of the Mavs' dual lineup.
She is also 12-14 in doubles, having played alongside Maier in all but one match.
Winning Season
Regardless of this weekend's results, the Mavericks have already secured their first above .500 season since 2016, when they went 16-13.
CMU's 15 wins this season are also the most since that 2016 squad.
PacWest Seeding History
The Mavs' No. 7 seed in the PacWest Tournament is their highest in the five years that they have been members of the conference.
They were the No. 12 seed in last year's tournament and dropped their opening round match to fifth-seeded Academy of Art, which went on to win the tournament, by a 4-0 margin. The Mavs then fell to ninth-seeded MSU Denver in the consolation round, 4-2.
In 2023, the Mavs were seeded eighth but lost matches to No. 9 seed MSU Denver and No. 5 Fresno Pacific.
CMU was seeded 12
th in 2022 and tenth in their initial 2021 tournament appearance.
Probable Lineup
Here is a look at the Mavs' probable lineup for this week's tournament.
Singles
- Makenna Livingston (14-14; 12-13 in duals)
- Devyn Rodriguez (11-16; 9-14 in duals)
- Jade Brilhante (12-15; 11-11 in duals)
- Delia Maier (14-18; 11-14 in duals)
- Catalina Ballon Marin (11-15; 10-12 in duals)
- Jane Steur (16-6; 16-5 in duals)
Doubles
- Brilhante/Rodriguez (17-11; 14-9 in duals)
- Livingston/Maier (11-14; 10-12 in duals)
- Ballon Marin/Steur (13-10; 13-9 in duals)
Experienced Mavs
The Mavericks have three members of their probable lineup, who also played in last's year's PacWest Tournament.
Makenna Livingston has been a member of the Mavs' conference tournament team in all three previous years and has two PacWest Tournament wins to her credit.
Junior
Delia Maier won a No. 6 singles match over MSU Denver last year and was leading her match against Academy of Art in the opening round when it was left unfinished. She and then doubles partner
Kristen Thomas went 1-1 a year ago.
Devyn Rodriguez also went 1-1 in doubles at last year's tournament with partner
Julianna Campos. She was 0-1 at No. 3 singles but was up a set in her unfinished match against the Academy of Art.
Know Your Foe
The Hawai'i Hilo Vulcans will enter the tournament with a 7-11 record this spring. They were 6-9 against PacWest foes and played six matches against the league's other two Hawai'I institutions in Chaminade and Hawai'i Pacific.
McKenna Mountain is their top player and has a strong 11-6 singles record, all at No. 1 singles. She is ranked 70
th nationally by the ITA, just three spots behind her likely opponent in CMU's
Makenna Livingston.
Mila Srebro is second on the team with six wins and has played in the second, third and fourth flights. Cami Oyama (5-8), Marie Cordonnier (5-10) and Akari Ichikawa (5-11) all have five wins.
Head Coach Guilherme De Medeiros only has six players on the roster and has used five different double pair combinations throughout the season.
Ichikawa and Mountain are 5-3 together and have played nearly exclusively at No. 2, going 5-2.
Lehua Jordan and Oyama are 5-3 at No. 3 while Cordonnier and Srebro are 6-7 in the top flight and have won three straight decisions.
Series History
The Vulcans have won all four previous match-ups between the teams, including three in recent times. All four meeting have come in neutral settings.
Hilo won 6-1 on Mar. 19 of last year in Azusa, California after taking a narrow 4-3 decision on Apr. 2, 2023 in Denver, Colorado.
The two teams also met in the consolation round of the 2021 PacWest Tournament, a match the Vulcans won, 4-2. The only other meeting was in 2008 in Phoenix.
Roadrunners then avenged that victory with a 5-4 win in the 2017 RMAC Tournament.
Up Next
The winner of Wednesday's opening round match will play No. 2 seed Point Loma, which is 15-4 this season and ranked 20
th nationally as a team by the ITA, in Thursday morning's quarterfinals.
The loser of the Maverick/Vulcan tussle will play the loser of the 6/11 first-round match-up between Hawai'i Pacific and defending conference champion Academy of Art in a consolation match on Thursday evening.
