2014 AVCA Week 3 poll: Top team changes, conference doesn’t

Defending national champion Calvin had held the No. 1 ranking since the preseason, but two losses last weekend necessitated a change at the top. The new No. 1 is Calvin’s MIAA conference rival Hope, which was idle last weekend. Calvin fell to fourth. No. 2 Emory, No. 3 Cal Lutheran and Mount Union rounded out the top five in the AVCA Week 3 poll.

It’s Mount Union’s highest-ever ranking. Hope, which hosts Calvin on Saturday, was also the top-ranked team in Weeks 7-9 last season.

Other Central and Midwest teams in the Week 3 top 25: No. 7 Washington-St. Louis; No. 9 Wisconsin-Stevens Point; No. 13 Elmhurst; No. 14 Saint Benedict; No. 20 St. Thomas; No. 21 Nebraska Wesleyan (cue “Hallelujah Chorus”); No. 22 Coe; No. 24 Augsburg; No. 25 Cornell.

Central and Midwest teams receiving votes this week: Millikin; Wisconsin-Whitewater; Wartburg; Carthage; Wisconsin Oshkosh; Chicago.

Feedback starts with Nebraska Wesleyan. It’s a good start, but there’s a ways to go. If you had the opportunity to watch the Prairie Wolves dismantle Washington-St. Louis on the Bears’ home floor like I did, you may feel differently. No, WUSTL didn’t play well. But it wasn’t a fluke. My Week 3 top 10 rankings were 0.1% to draw attention to a particular team and 99.9% where I think NWU deserves to be ranked through three weeks.

And finally, can we get a general accounting firm to tally the first-place votes again? If the first-place votes are correct as listed in this week’s poll, what’s the point of having a poll? If the published poll is correct, some voters need to have their voting privileges revoked because they have not met due diligence requirements. It’s unfathomable to me that Hope was not unanimous. Maybe, maybe Emory had an outside chance to get a few stray top votes. As for the others that apparently received first-place votes, matches have results. Honor the results. Can we agree to not use the poll as a crystal ball three weeks into the season? That’s what the preseason poll is for.

It’s weeks like this that make me miss the AVCA’s publishing of individual ballots.

-Ricky Nelson