In the Mavericks final road trip of the season, Colorado Mesa University (CMU) Volleyball continued their .500 ways in Utah.
On Friday, Oct. 25 the Mavericks played Westminster College (WC), and then traveled to St. George, Utah to play a very tough Dixie State University (DSU) the next day. This was going to be an interesting road trip because the Griffins are the second-worst team in the RMAC, and DSU and CMU are battling for the third and fourth spots in the RMAC standings.
Rightfully, the Mavericks swept WC but couldn’t get the job done against DSU and lost 3-1.
“Good win at Westminster, they are really steady, and they made some really good adjustments, so that was a good team win. In St. George, we just weren’t dealing with adversity well, they go on some runs and we just couldn’t answer,” CMU Head Coach Dave Fleming said. “They were triple blocking our middles and so our middles could’ve still been successful but the adjustments we made weren’t good enough.”
Against Westminster College, the Mavericks took control early and they never took their foot off the gas pedal. CMU won the game 3-0 with the first and second sets being much closer than the third. The Mavericks had a .290 hitting percentage against the Griffins.
The third set was tightly contested as the Mavericks led 11-9 as they tried to cleanly sweep the Griffins. CMU pulled away by consistently putting up two or more points consecutively compared to the Griffins one as they went on to win the final set 25-16.
In the second game of the weekend, CMU took on Dixie State University in a very tough RMAC matchup.
“The Dixie game was really important, I felt that if we won that one with Colorado School of Mines losing to Colorado Christian that we would solidified us for third place and put us on the right side of the bracket for the RMAC tournament,” Fleming said.
The first set opened with the Trailblazers going on an 8-2 run to grab the early momentum. The Mavericks were faced with a tough challenge to open the match, but they climbed back into the game with their sheer will as they chipped the deficit down to three. It didn’t matter though as the Trailblazers won the first set 25-22.
The second set opened on a completely different note as the Mavericks went on a 10-4. The Mavericks kept their distance from the Trailblazers as they won the set 25-21. CMU had 17 kills with a .303 hitting percentage and they only had five errors throughout the whole set.
The third and fourth sets were all Trailblazers as the Mavericks barely got over 15 points in the third and only scored 13 points in the fourth. CMU was unable to get anything going on the outside against DSU’s blockers.
“We have to attack everything that we do as a team, we have to have each other’s back. We can’t be passive, we must be proactive on defense, blocking and attacking, doesn’t matter,”
Fleming said. “We just have to be proactive and we have to understand that we have to go out there and make plays. We can’t let the game come to us; we have to go attack it.”
Senior Camille Smith led the Mavericks in kills against DSU with 15.
CMU’s next game will be against Fort Lewis at 7 p.m. in Brownson Arena as they close the rest of the season out at home.
