AVCA Top 25 (9/10/19)

The week two AVCA Top 25 coaches poll is out, which you can find here.

Some pretty radical changes for the AVCA in the week 2 poll. Usually, changes are very slow to develop but give credit where credit is due as we see the coaches embracing 4 new teams and even sending one into the Top 10. The poll still has Emory first followed by Calvin as Emory secured 70 first place votes with Calvin receiving the other 8. These two teams are the only ones receiving first or second place votes this week and you really can’t argue it.

My rankings came out yesterday and we may be as close as we have ever been with only a two team difference. The AVCA has Babson at 20 and Pacific Lutheran at 24 while I have UW-Stevens Point at 9 and Transylvania at 22. The big mover was newcomer Carnegie Mellon as they jumped from receiving votes all the way to number 10. The big drop came from Gustavus Adolphus who went from 11 to out of the poll.

Looking specifically at the West Region and we again have 5 teams in the Top 25 – CMS (3), Colorado College (7), Trinity (11), Pacific Lutheran (24) and UMHB (25). In the receiving votes category, we have UT-Dallas and Southwestern. (Mental note, be sure to send thank you cards to those voters.)

Taking the roll call this week and we see that there were only 60 voters down from 63 last week. We did get a number of first-time voters as the list of names is now up to 71 out of the 78 who are supposed to vote.

If you remember last week we had a New England coach selecting 7 teams from her region in the Top 25 including 5 from her conference. Well, she’s a bit better this week with a total of “only” 5 New England Region teams. Interestingly, she had Colorado College at 14 last week and after a 4-0 weekend and beating a New England Region team in MIT, she has bounced them from her rankings.

It’s also interesting to note that Illinois Wesleyan was finally dropped from the rankings due to their 0-7 record, but they still are receiving votes (45). I actually spent some time trying to find an IWU voter and finally found one who had them at 14 on their rankings (up from 15 from the week before). Glad they didn’t lose more than 4 matches last weekend or they may have made the Top 10. He also has Christopher Newport at 9 after their 4 loss weekend (holding steady from week 1).

You know these coaches get a nice worksheet with all of the teams and how they did over the past week. You really have to work hard to be that bad at voting.