D3VbWest Top 25 (10/7/24)

Six weeks gone! We are right about at the half-way mark so these rankings mean more than they ever have, which means nothing. They are still worth nothing. I am getting a late start on this work and it sure would be nice if my top 25 didn’t lose this week. I’m sure that didn’t happen.

Here is what we’ve got this week:

My rank, (my previous rank, AVCA rank), record; key results; Points/Set.1 (1, 1) Juniata 14-0, W: None; 18.5. 2 (2, 5) MIT 16-0, W: None; 17.96. 3 (3, 3) Johns Hopkins 15-2, W: None; 18.11. 4 (4, 6) Emory 14-1, W: None; 17.82.  5 (6, 2) Hope 13-2, W: Calvin; 17.80. 6 (5, 7) UW-Oshkosh 16-4, W: Carthage L: Edgewood; 17.22. 7 (7, 4) UW-Whitewater 15-2, W: UW-Eau Claire; 18.34.  8 (8, 8) Millikin 18-3, W: None L: IWU; 17.30.   9 (9, 13) Marietta 12-0, W: ONU; 17.41.  10 (10, 11) East Texas Baptist 16-1, W: None; 18.08.    11 (11, 16) Case Western Reserve 16-2, W: None; 15.64. 12 (14, 12) Northwestern 11-5, W: None; 15.94.  13 (12, 9) WashU 15-4, W: None; 17.63.  14 (17, NR) Colby 14-1, W: None; 17.00. 15 (13, 18) UW-Platteville 17-3, W: None L: St Kate; N/A. 16 (15, 14) La Verne 11-3, W: None; 17.48. 17 (16, 17) Southwestern 13-1, W: None; 17.18. 18 (18, 23) Centre 13-4, W: Berry; 15.77.  19 (19, 10) Claremont-M-S 11-3, W: Whittier; 17.92. 20 (21, 23) Chicago 17-3, W: North Park; 17.35. 21 (22, 19) Washington & Lee 17-0, W: VA Wesleyan; 17.05. 22 (NR, 22) Ithaca 11-3, W: Trinity, Smith L: NYU; 17.71. 23 (20, 21) Trinity 10-6, W: Smith, NYU L: Ithaca; 16.98. 24 (24, NR) William Smith 12-2, W: Cortland; 16.71. 25 (25, NR) Gettysburg 15-1, W: None; 17.03.

Dropped:  Franklin & Marshall (23)

Hey! I didn’t do too much! Thankfully. I do have a problem because I think I have about 10 teams that could be in this ranking. In the end, I only dropped F&M so only one spot to give out. I decided to go with Ithaca because I didn’t want to dump Trinity. Like I said, there could have been 10 teams here. F&M were swept by William Paterson. A team that is one of the 10 but I just didn’t think they deserved to come in so F&M was an easy drop.

Let’s be quick this week due to the lack of changes. My top 4 didn’t change and, in fact, my only change in the Top 10 was swapping Hope and Oshkosh. Oshkosh has a win over Hope so why do it? I just felt Oshkosh needed a little tough love. They are not 100% right but I still think they are a top 10 team. Millikin is another top 10 team that took a loss but there is just so much good with them that I didn’t feel like I needed to drop them. Sometimes teams just don’t have it. Just don’t do it twice.

CWRU stays at 11 before we start seeing some changes at 12. I decided to move Northwestern up as they do have a win over WashU and I had them pretty close before. I also wanted to give a little more love to Colby so they got moved up a tad. UWP was moved down a bit due to their loss. After that, not much new until Ithaca comes in at 22. I figured they needed to be before Trinity as they just beat them. I’m still not sold on W&L but it was a solid win over VA Wesleyan. Just wish their overall schedule had been tougher.

And that’s about it. What else can I say? I am nervous about certain teams but when I go look for replacements, I get even more nervous. Sorry, this is so short but there are a number of articles out today on the site for you to read. Stop nagging me!