AVCA Top 25 Poll

The AVCA has come out with their preseason Top 25 poll and they have given a tip of the cap to the defending champion Emory Eagles. Emory received 54 first place votes (out of 69 cast) and finished with 1700 points. In my preseason poll I had Emory in the 7th spot due to their heavy graduation losses.  Ricky Nelson had Emory in 6th in his preseason poll.

Overall the AVCA missed on four teams as they included Illinois Wesleyan, Gustavus Adolphus, Hope and Bowdoin where I had Carthage (AVCA 27), UW-Stevens Point (33), Birmingham-Southern (30) and DePauw (29). In fairness to the AVCA, I also heavily considered Hope and Bowdoin. When I was doing the poll I struggled to find 30 teams that I felt comfortable putting in the Top 25. I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise then that our two polls are pretty close with respect to the teams listed.

Rounding out the top 5 in the AVCA poll, they have Calvin (10 first place votes) at 2 followed by Juniata (2 first place votes), UW-Eau Claire and CMS (3 first place votes). Both Ricky’s poll and mine had CMS in the top spot so we know there are only three well informed coaches doing the poll this year. (That was a joke. We’re all just having fun here. But, seriously, if they release the individual coaches input then I’ll be naming names!)

The AVCA has 4 West Region teams in the poll with CMS at 5, Colorado College coming in at 7th, UMHB in at 15th and Trinity in at 17th. This matched the West Region teams I had in my poll. Ricky, with his heavy anti-West Region bias only included 3 teams from the Best Region (I mean West Region).

The AVCA poll did include two teams that didn’t end the year in the final poll as Christopher Newport checked in at 22 and Ohio Northern checked in tied at 23. Just missing out of the AVCA Top 25 were West Region teams Pacific Lutheran (26th), UT-Dallas (31st), Cal Lutheran (32nd), Puget Sound (40th) and La Verne (46th). I’m intrigued by the coaches that had Puget Sound on their ballots because I also believe they have the potential to surprise this year.

One thing to remember about the AVCA voting is that they adjust the totals to assume there are (it seems this year) 69 voters. So, if fewer coaches vote then whomever has the highest total will receive the missing first place votes and the remaining votes will also be adjusted down the line to make it seem like there were 69 voters.

Okay, the first AVCA poll is in the books. My hope is that these voters throw all of this away when the first week of matches gets played. A lot of these teams are being considered for what they did last year and in 2 weeks none of that matters. In 2 weeks the king is dead and we’ll spend three glorious months finding a new one.