D3VbWest Top 25 (10/28/2024)

I went off script last week with my rankings and just broke teams down into tiers. I’m going to use those tiers this week and select my Top 25 this week. A lot of work last week will hopefully mean less work this week.

Here are my rankings:

My rank, (my previous rank, AVCA rank), record; key results; Points/Set.1 (1, 1) Juniata 23-0, W: Wesleyan, Colby, Ithaca; 19.0. 2 (2, 4) MIT 24-0, W: Middlebury, Tufts; 18.22. 3 (3, 3) Johns Hopkins 22-2, W: None; 18.46. 4 (4, 5) Emory 19-1, W: NYU; 17.90.  5 (5, 6) UW-Oshkosh 22-4, W: UW-Stevens Point; 17.65. 6 (6, 2) Hope 21-2, W: Calvin; 17.92. 7 (7, 7) UW-Whitewater 20-3, W: None; 18.50.  8 (8, 9) Millikin 26-3, W: None; 17.42.   9 (10, 8) WashU 23-4, W: Chicago, Carnegie Mellon; 17.63.  10 (9, 11) Marietta 19-0, W: None; 17.14.  11 (11, 10) East Texas Baptist 21-1, W: None; 18.05. 12 (12, 22) Colby 20-2, W: Ithaca L: Juniata; 16.94. 13 (15, 20) UW-Platteville 21-4, W: Coe; 17.57. 14 (14, 17) Case Western Reserve 20-4, W: Carnegie Mellon, Chicago; 15.57. 15 (19, 16) Washington & Lee 24-2, W: None; 16.84. 16 (NR, NR) Salisbury 21-2; W: Messiah, VA Wesleyan; 18.05. 17 (13, 12) La Verne 16-4, W: None L: Chapman; 17.77. 18 (17, 13) Claremont-M-S 16-4, W: Whittier; 18.25. 19 (18, 15) Chicago 20-7, W: None L: WashU, CWRU; 16.93. 20 (20, 19) Ithaca 17-5, W: Wesleyan L: Juniata, Colby; 17.17. 21 (22, 21) Trinity 18-6, W: Southwestern; 17.39. 22 (16, NR) Centre 18-4, W: None; 16.08.  23 (21, 14) Southwestern 18-3, W: None L: Trinity; 16.61. 24 (NR, 25) UW-Eau Claire 18-6, W: None; 17.03. 25 (NR, NR) Carnegie Mellon 14-10, W: None L: CWRU, WashU; 16.40.

Dropped:  Northwestern (23), William Smith (24) & Gettysburg (25)

All three of the dropped teams were in my sixth-tier last week. All took losses so it made the decision to drop them a little easier. I still like all three teams. The three teams coming in are all from my 5^th tier.

I did have to make a tough choice who to drop from my 5^th tier. It came down to Centre, Southwestern, NYU, UW-Eau Claire, UW-Stevens Point and Carnegie Mellon. Two were not going to make it. I centered on either dropping 2 WIAC teams or 2 UAA teams. Keeping one each pushed me to keeping the team I didn’t think deserved it over the other (if that makes sense). I ultimately decided to keep the WIAC teams and order them based on their head-to-head. Next up (and out) are Carnegie Mellon and NYU who were the two teams that didn’t make my rankings. WAIT! UWSP has lost their last 3 matches including one against Edgewood. I just can’t. Bouncing them and NYU who have a loss to CMU. CMU has two 5-set losses to CWRU and WashU this weekend but they are right there with two Top 15 teams. They really have played a crazy hard schedule but have some great wins mixed in. No looking back this time.

The rest of the rankings was just ordering. My Top 8 didn’t change in teams or ordering. I thought really hard about moving WashU up a couple of spots. They are really playing well. In the end, I moved them ahead of undefeated Marietta just because their wins are much better. UWP gets a small jump into 13^th bypassing a tier in a sense. Washington & Lee was moved up. I’m still not 100% where they need to be but they look pretty good when I watch them. Salisbury jumps into my rankings and are the biggest benefactor from my tiers last week. They have a loss to W&L, which is why they are not higher. La Verne took that loss to Chapman but that was without one of the best players in the country. I still have them over CMS and that will get additional data on Friday when they play.

Trinity moves ahead of Southwestern as they really showed they were better this past weekend. Centre takes a hit. They were being propped up by CMS but I don’t like their Points/Set number. I still think they are a good team but I like them here in the rankings more than before. I mentioned these last four teams (including Centre) above. Any could be gone next week after some important matches get played.

Alright, it looks like SCAC news just dropped so going to deal with that before publishing this.