AVCA Top 25 (9/5/23)

The AVCA has released their Week 1 Top 25 Poll. It’s a bit late but first week and all that’s to be expected.

I mentioned in the preseason poll that there were only 86 voters but assumed there were 4 (for a total of 90 like last year) that voted for someone outside the Top 25. I guess that’s still possible as there are, again, 86 voters but maybe there are just that number this year.

Juniata lands in first place with 84 of the first place votes and we see CMS move into the second spot due to the loss by Trinity this weekend. Rounding out the top 5 are Hope (1 first place vote), Calvin (1 first place vote) and Northwestern.

Dropping out of the poll from the preseason were Otterbein, Williams and UW-Eau Claire. The three new entries to the rankings were UC Santa Cruz, Coe and Cornell. UCSC was already in my rankings and Cornell moved in this week, as well. Coe is an interesting choice but I felt there were more deserving schools.

From Region X, we have CMS (2), Trinity (6) and UC Santa Cruz (19). In the receiving votes category, we have La Verne, Puget Sound, Colorado College, Pomona-Pitzer, UT-Dallas and Texas Lutheran. A lot of weirdness in that and other teams that received votes but it’s early.

The biggest riser this week was UW-Oshkosh moving up 7 spots to 8th while Transylvania dropped 8 spots to 16. Teams that the AVCA has that I don’t are Tufts, Gust. Adolphus, Coe and Chris Newport. I have Ohio Northern, La Verne, Mt St Joseph and Chicago.

The individual coaches ballots are released with this ranking and I counted less than 70 actual voters (out of the supposed 86). Remember that the AVCA will take the order from the actual voters and then cast the remaining ballots for that order.