AVCA Top 25 (10/05/21)

The AVCA has released the Week 5 Top 25 Poll. We have a slight change in ordering from last week and we have NYU jumping into the Top 10 (at 10) with Emory dropping out of the Top 10 (down to 13). The top team remains Johns Hopkins and they have increased their first place vote total by 2 (now stands at 85). One of the Blue Jays best players, Simone Bliss, was injured and has missed the last week’s worth of matches but it hasn’t stopped them from continuing to win. It’s believe Simone will be back before the end of the season so that is some good news there. CMS stays in the second spot receiving 4 first place votes (down 2 from last week), with Trinity, Hope and Colorado College rounding out the Top 5. Interestingly, Hope and Calvin switched positions after Hope’s 5-set win this past week. Wartburg moves up one spot to 7th and they have the 90th and final first place vote.

Only one team was dropped from the rankings and that was Millikin who has fallen on hard times these past two weeks. They were replaced by a team I have in my Top 25 in Otterbein (25). Good job AVCA!

The biggest riser this week was NYU who went from 16 to 10. The biggest faller was Emory going from 7 to 13. NYU beat Emory this past week so it all makes sense.

From Region X, we have CMS (2), Trinity (3), Colorado College (5), Mary Hardin-Baylor (8), Southwestern (17) and UC Santa Cruz (20). That’s the second week in a row where 6 teams from our region have made the cut. UCSC is up 4 spots after not playing (although they did have an exhibition match). In the receiving votes category, only Whitworth represents Region X.

My rankings differ from the AVCA by two teams this week. The AVCA has Chicago (19) and WashU (23). My rankings have Wittenberg (18) and Middlebury (25).