AVCA Top 25 Poll

The AVCA has come out with their DIII preseason Top 25 coaches poll.

It appears the voters simply used the results from the end of last season, which means CMS will be our initial #1 team. Since they are from the West Region, I certainly don’t have any issues with this positioning. As long as the voters throw all of this out the window after the first week’s matches then I’m fine. But, they won’t.

Rounding out the top 5 is CMS, Calvin, Colorado College, Wittenberg and Emory. First place votes went to CMS (42), Colorado College (9), Wittenberg (7), Calvin (3) and Emory (1).

You can find my preseason Top 25 here.

From the West Region we have CMS (1), Colorado College (3), Southwestern (9), Trinity (11) and Pacific Lutheran (22) in the Top 25. Whittier, UT-Dallas, Cal Lutheran and UMHB all were teams that received votes.

The big movers from the end of last year’s poll were Northwestern (dropped 5 spots), Millikin (dropped 4 spots) and Juniata (rose 4 spots). Berry (25) was the only team to appear in the poll that wasn’t there last year.

As far as comparisons with my poll, teams I have in the Top 25 that aren’t in the AVCA version are UT-Dallas (12), Chicago (13), UW-Eau Claire (14), Aurora (15), UW-Oshkosh (18), UMHB (19), DePauw (22) and Thomas More (25). I think these teams are all in for a great year, and I expect to see the bulk of them break into the AVCA poll this year.