AVCA Top 25 (9/3/24)

It’s time for the weekly madness that is the AVCA Top 25! I released my Top 25 yesterday and we’ll some comparing and contrasting below. We’ve got 86 voters this year both in person and virtual. Remember that if less than 86 vote that the AVCA takes the average of those that did vote and creates virtual voters in order to get to 86. In other words, if there are 46 actual voters and Juniata is ranked first then the 40 virtual votes will all have Juniata first on their “ballot”. Still ranked first is Juniata and they have 85 of the 86 first place votes. Evidently, the Eagles did something poorly over the weekend that one voter decided to give their vote to Hope. I do think these are the two best teams in the nation but I struggle why a voter felt the need to switch given that Juniata has won two consecutive national championships and is about to break the DIII record for consecutive wins. Maybe they just craved some Mackinac Island fudge and that was enough to give their vote to a Michigan school. They did give Juniata their 2^nd place vote. Hope did finish second overall and received every 2^nd place vote possible except from one fudge hating voter that had them third. Rounding out the Top 5 was NYU, Johns Hopkins and Trinity. In my rankings, I had Emory in my Top 5 instead of NYU. There was one difference in our Top 10 as the AVCA still has CMS there while I have Millikin. CMS lost to Centre while Millikin beat two Top 25 teams while losing to UW-Oshkosh (8^th).

Dropping out of the AVCA rankings were UW-Stevens Point and Mount St Joseph. I also dropped UWSP but didn’t have MSJ in my rankings originally. I went further and dropped 4 other teams that the AVCA still has ranked, which means our rankings differ by quite a bit.

Region X teams in the rankings are Trinity (5), CMS (9), La Verne (11) and ETBU (25). ETBU joined the rankings this week along with Millikin who debut at 17. Other Region X teams receiving votes were Southwestern, Mary Hardin-Baylor, Whitworth and Colorado College.

I am, of course, disappointed that the preseason rankings had such an impact on this week’s rankings but that is the nature of this poll. It’s slow moving and favors the power programs.

Normally, the ballots are linked to the rankings but I didn’t see them this week. They could show up later in the week.