AVCA Top 25 (11/1/22)

The AVCA has released their Week 10 Top 25 Poll. Not a lot of movement but there was some and certainly more than there was on my lazy effort.

The Top 5 saw Trinity and Calvin swap spots and two teams jump into the Top 10 in Emory and UW-Oshkosh. They pushed out Wittenberg and Whitewater as the AVCA voters rebelled against the ‘W’ schools. No truth to the rumor that WashU will be the next to go.

CMS remains the only undefeated team in DIII and is still our unanimous choice for the top spot. Whoa! What? Juniata picks up a first-place vote this week. I’m so excited!!!! These are the most boring articles to write and now I get to write about the coach that put Juniata first. I’m literally crying in joy right now.

Welcome to the discussion Susquehanna Coach Kuuipo Tom! After having CMS as his top team in every vote until now, he took a week off to reevaluate things, it appears, and came up with a new order! Coach Tom has Juniata first, obviously. He then follows up with NYU, UW-Stevens Point, UW-Eau Claire and then CMS. There is so much wrong here that I’m just giddy. Look, Juniata could be the best team in the nation. They really could. They did lose to Trinity away for their only loss but who is to say what would happen on a neutral court. Of course, CMS beat Trinity on a neutral court, but let’s ignore that for a second. NYU second is also fun. They, of course, were swept by CMS (at CMS) the first week of the season. I don’t know. Maybe Coach Tom watches a lot of the matches and decided that the eye is telling him who’s the best team now. A lot could change from the first week until now. Well, not everything can change. CMS still is undefeated.

Okay. Back to this reality. After CMS, we have Juniata followed by Trinity, Calvin and Northwestern. Another fun fact from this poll is that we had two ties! Emory and NYU tied at 6th and Otterbein and Transylvania tied at 18th. Fun!

The big risers were Emory and Transylvania both jumping 5 spots in the rankings. The big faller was Coach Tom’s #4 team, UW-Eau Claire, who dropped 3 spots despite his efforts. Leaving the rankings was Augsburg and they were replaced by Ithaca.

Region X teams in the rankings are CMS, Trinity and UC Santa Cruz. Colorado College is still receiving votes along with Southwestern. Yay Pirates!

As of today, my rankings and the AVCA’s rankings differ by only one team. They now have Ithaca and I have Case Western Reserve.

As a reminder, I published the Region X Rankings this morning. The final rankings before selection come out tomorrow. Albion remains the only AVCA Top 25 team not regionally ranked.