AVCA Top 25 (9/24/24)

We have the AVCA Top 25 for Week 4 released. I am going to assume that we only have one dumb voter. I know that is a stretch but stay with me. Juniata, in the midst of the longest winning streak in DIII history, is not unanimous like they were last week. One voter has decided to give that to MIT and place Juniata second. Something like this happened earlier in the year with Hope and I have to assume it’s the same voter. Look, I get that they are both undefeated and that MIT is really good but even my BFF MIT Head Coach Paul Dill would agree with me. Unless it was Paul that voted for his own team. I’d be okay with that, but I’d still give him a hard time.

Rounding out the Top 5 after Juniata is UW-Oshkosh, UW-Whitewater, Hope and Johns Hopkins. In the D3VbWest Top 25, I had the same top 3 in order followed by MIT (love you Dill) and Johns Hopkins. Our Top 10 differs with the AVCA going with CMS while I went with Millikin. We do have a slightly different order.

The AVCA didn’t drop anyone this week which means no one was added. Usually, we have to wait for full blown conference play to get that level of inactivity but the voters are in mid-season form already. Overall, the AVCA has Ithaca and Transylvania in their Top 25 while I have, instead, Colby and Franklin & Marshall.

The biggest jump this week was 4 spots, which was done by both East Texas Baptist and Southwestern. ETBU now sits tied for 13th while Southwestern sits 19th. This is the second week in a row that ETBU has made the biggest jump. The biggest fall was 5 spots, which was done by Trinity. This is the third week in a row that Trinity has made the biggest fall.

Region X teams in the rankings are La Verne (9), CMS (10), ETBU (13), Southwestern (19) and Trinity (20). Receiving votes from the region are Mary Hardin-Baylor and Whitworth.

Nice to see the voters giving some love to my Pirates. See, that’s why they are not all dumb.