AVCA Top 25 (9/4/18)

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

There was a lot of movement in the poll from the one done in the preseason, which is good and shows a number of the coaches are paying attention. With that said, the Top 4 remained the Top 4 but in a different order and there were a couple of more teams that should probably have dropped out of the rankings.

Calvin College is our new number 1 team as they received 50 first place votes and 1723 overall points. Colorado College slides in to the 2 spot as they received 8 first place votes and 1634 overall points. Wittenberg is third with 6 first place votes, CMS fourth with 5 first place votes and Trinity is fifth. Cal Lutheran also recived a first place vote but finished 11th in the ranking.

There appears to be 70 possible voters now as opposed to the 62 that voted in the presesason poll. I went through the ballots and only found 57 voters, however. So, how does the AVCA get 70 first place votes when only 57 coaches voted? The AVCA will normalize the votes if not everyone votes in a week. Since Calvin finished first amoung the 57 voters, they added 13 first place votes to their total. Since Colorado College finished 2nd with the 57 voters, they received 13 second place votes and so on and so forth.

Looking specifically at the West Region and we have 6 teams in the Top 25 – Colorado College (2), CMS (4), Trinity (5), Cal Lutheran (11), Pacific Lutheran (12) and Southwestern (21). In the receiving votes category, we have UT-Tyler, UT-Dallas, UMHB, La Verne and Chapman. That’s 11 schools from our region (27% of the total teams) getting votes, which is quite impressive.

In case you missed my Top 25, you can find it here. I had Colorado College first and Calvin second with Hope in the Top 5 and CMS pushed down the rankings a bit. I also brought UT-Tyler into the Top 10 based on their impressive victory over IWU this weekend. With UT-Tyler moving to DII next year and not being eligible for any DIII Tournaments, I was unsure if they were eligible for the poll. Obviously, they are.

One really cool item is that both Juniata and Washington-St. Louis have been in the AVCA poll each week since 1992. Both teams struggled their first week and are now 15 and 19, respectively. Another poor week and we could see one (if not both) drop out of the poll for the first time ever!

Now that I’m releasing my Top 25 prior to the AVCA, my hope is that one day a coach will follow my exact rankings but it didn’t happen today. For those Regals fans out there interested in where their first place vote came from, thank you cards should be sent to Bambi Hawkins (Head Coach of Pennsylvania College of Technology).