GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— Colorado Mesa University freshman outside hitter
Molly Whalen matched her uniform number with a season-high 22 kills and hit .529 while fellow outside hitter
Ashlee Macias and sophomore setter
Ashlyn Tafoya both registered double-doubles to lead the Mavericks to a 3-0 sweep of visiting Fort Lewis College in the quarterfinal round of the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Tournament on Tuesday evening here in Brownson Arena.
Whalen had 11 kills in the second set alone and went in to the third with 19 as the Mavericks claimed their sixth straight victory to advance to the RMAC Tournament semifinals for the seventh straight season.
The Mavs' last four wins have come in 3-0 sweeps.
The third-seeded Mavs, now 22-5 overall, will take on the second-seeded Colorado School of Mines Orediggers for the third time this season as the Orediggers, ranked 19
th in this week's AVCA-Taraflex Division II Poll, shook off a slow start to post a 3-1 win over Colorado Christian earlier in the evening in Golden.
The Orediggers, who have two wins over the Mavs, have won 17 straight matches and are 24-3 overall.
Friday night's semifinal, slated for 7:30 p.m., will take place at MSU Denver's Auraria Event Center after top-seeded MSU Denver swept No. 8 seed Adams State to clinch the right to host the remainder of the tournament for the sixth straight season as the highest remaining seed. The Roadrunners (21-6) will face No. 5 seed South Dakota Mines, which picked up its' 20
th win of the season on the road over No. 4 seed UCCS in Colorado Springs on Tuesday, in the first semifinal on Friday at 5 p.m.
Whalen's 22-kill total was the best for any Maverick in a 3-set match since 2021 and was the Mavericks best of any length match this season.
Macias also had a strong night, recording her seventh double-double of the campaign with 14 kills and 13 digs. Tafoya also had her second double-double of the campaign with 19 assists and 11 digs while fellow setter
Hallie Hewlett also doled out 19 assists while adding seven digs.
Opposite hitter
Kaitlyn Hall also contributed significantly off the bench with seven kills while hitting .538 while libero
Maya Grant recorded 14 digs to out-do Skyhawk counterpart Alyx Daugherty, the RMAC digs leader, by one.
Skyhawk senior Alina Nunez, one of the RMAC's top hitters, finished with 12 kills and 11 digs to help pace the Skyhawks while Cambria Freymuth had 10 kills on .474 hitting.
FLC, the tournament's sixth seed, finish the season with a 15-12 record and have gone 21 seasons without a post-season win.
The Mavericks finished the match hitting .336 as a team, 123 points better than the Skyhawks, who had just two hitting errors in both of the first two sets and just nine overall.
However, they could not keep pace with the Maverick attack, which was good for 52 total kills, including 37 in the first two sets. The Skyhawks had 33 kills as the Maverick back row dug up 56 attacks, 12 more digs more than visitors could muster.
The Skyhawks had their chances in the first set and led by as many as four points at 8-4 and by three at 17-14 before the Mavs came back to tie the set at 18 and again at 20 as Whalen put down back-to-back kills.
Macias then added two more kills in another 3-0 Maverick spurt to close out the set, which saw CMU hit .395.
Whalen had eight kills in the opening frame while Macias had seven.
The Maverick freshman then took over the second set recording six kills in a 7-rally stretch that also featured a Macias kill as the Mavs jumped out to a 14-3 lead before cruising to the 10-point margin of victory.
Whalen hit .733 without an error in the second set.
She and the Mavericks did come back down to earth in the third although the Mavericks still out-hit the Skyhawks, .182-.100 as they came from 8-4 and 14-12 deficits to take their first lead of the seat 17-16 on the first of two kills from Hall down the line.
Whalen then had her final kill to put the Mavs up 20-18 as CMU scored five of the final six points to seal up the match on two consecutive Macias kills.
