AVCA Top 25 (9/16/25)

The AVCA has released their Top 25 for Week 3.

I think I put the over/under on Juniata receiving first-place votes at 6.5. They received 2. So, good for the voters (mostly) for paying attention. Some bad is that Oshkosh received 2, as well. The team that just lost to La Verne on their home court. So, that’s four voters that are not really paying attention.

The AVCA did come out with a new #1 in UW-Whitewater this week, breaking a streak by Juniata of being in the top spot since November 22, 2022. (They were second on November 8, 2022.) I figured the the top spot would either go to Whitewater or La Verne (who is second with 12 first-place votes). I went with La Verne in part because Whitewater’s SOS is only 0.529. Their best win is Berry where as La Verne’s SOS is 0.592 with their best win being Oshkosh. It was actually not very close in my mind although that’s not to say that UWW isn’t the better team. It’s just that they haven’t proven it objectively, yet. You can compare/contrast the AVCA rankings with mine, which you can find here.

Rounding out the Top 5 are Oshkosh, Juniata and ETBU who received the last first-place vote. Looking at the Top 10, we find that two teams have come in as WashU slots at 7 while IWU slots in at 10. The other teams are Washington & Lee, Emory and Johns Hopkins.

Dropping from the Top 25 are NYU and Christopher Newport. I also dropped NYU this week, but oddly, after dropping Chris Newport last week, I had brought them back in this week. The two teams coming in are Carnegie Mellon, who had already been in my rankings, and Gustavus Adolphus, who I also brought in this week. Where we differ are with Hope, Virginia Wesleyan and UW-Platteville. Hope and UWP are a combined 8-9. I have Tufts, Franklin & Marshall and Chris Newport. It’s obviously that I’m just much nicer to the New England Regions than the AVCA is with my choice of Tufts.

Berry had the most movement up jumping 6 spots to 15th. That’s 7 spots behind the team they just beat in Emory. UWP fell the most losing 12 spots to fall to 25th.

Teams we closely follow on this site in the rankings are La Verne (2), ETBU (5), Berry (15), Trinity (16) and CMS (17). Teams receiving votes are Chris Newport, Southwestern, Whitworth and Salisbury.

As a reminder, the AVCA ranking is a like a big ocean tanker. It takes a long time to turn or change directions.