D3VbWest Top 25 (9/23/24)

Week 4 rankings! It’s almost like the season is going so fast that the Week 3 rankings didn’t happen!?! In reality, my rankings last week were the first where I got everything right and even predicted the results of the week with 100% accuracy. If you missed that article, you can find it here.

Despite my amazing results from last week, I’ve decided to start mainly from scratch with this round. Call me crazy. I’ll go through my reasoning, as always, below.

Here is what we’ve got this week:

My rank, (my previous rank, AVCA rank), record; key results; Points/Set.1 (1, 1) Juniata 10-0, W: Franklin & Marshall; 18.1. 2 (6, 5) UW-Oshkosh 13-2, W: UWW, Northwestern; 17.44. 3 (4, 3) UW-Whitewater 12-1, W: La Verne, Gust Adolphus L: UWO, Northwestern; 18.08. 4 (13, 8) MIT 12-0, W: JHU, NYU; 17.86. 5 (3, 2) Johns Hopkins 10-2, W: NYU L: MIT; 17.52. 6 (5, 6) Emory 11-1, W: Centre; 17.81. 7 (2, 4) Hope 8-2, W: None; 17.20. 8 (7, 14) Millikin 13-2, W: Hanover; 17.19. 9 (17, 9) WashU 12-2, W: Gust Adolphus, ULV, Cornell; 17.20. 10 (8, 7) La Verne 8-2, W: Cornell L: UWW, WashU; 17.43. 11 (12, 18) Marietta 10-0, W: CWRU; 17.49.  12 (19, 17) East Texas Baptist 12-1, W: None; 18.25.  13 (9, 22) Centre 9-3, W: None L: Emory; 15.98. 14 (10, 10) Claremont-M-S 6-3, W: None; 17.35. 15 (16, 13) Northwestern 6-5, W: None L: UWO; 15.19. 16 (23, 23) Southwestern 10-1, W: Trinity; 16.91. 17 (15, 19) Calvin 9-3, W: North Park L: Edgewood; 17.78. 18 (14, 12) North Park 10-1, W: None L: Calvin; 16.88. 19 (18, 15) Trinity 6-5, W: None L: Southwestern; 16.89. 20 (24, 21) Case Western Reserve 12-1, W: None L: Marietta; 15.34. 21 (NR, NR) Colby 9-1, W: Wesleyan; 16.46. 22 (11, 15) Gust. Adolphus 7-7, W: Cornell L: UWW, WashU; 16.40. 23 (20, 11) NYU 9-4, W: None L: JHU, MIT; 16.88. 24 (NR, NR) Washington & Lee 13-0, W: None; 16.67. 25 (NR, NR) Franklin & Marshall 10-2, W: None L: Juniata; 17.07.

Dropped Out: Stevens (21), Salisbury (22), Ithaca (25)

I feel really good about the first 8 teams. After that, things get murky.

Dropping out were Stevens, Salisbury and Ithaca. There just wasn’t a signature win for these teams and each had losses that knocked them out. All could return in the future and I like each of them.

New teams in are Colby College, Washington & Lee and Franklin & Marshall. Colby’s only loss was to MIT so no complaints there. They do have nice wins over Endicott (who beat Trinity), NYU and Wesleyan. W&L has a win over Salisbury (one reason they were knocked out this week) and a couple of other solid wins. They are undefeated. F&M were a tough add and I had about 6 teams in the running. They included Chicago, William Smith, Gettysburg, Babson, Hanover and the team you love so dearly. They have a couple of solid wins (Babson and Virgnia Wesleyan) but I struggled with that Eastern loss. Still, everyone has warts at 25.

Going down the rankings, as I said, I like the first 8. Not sure how much I need to talk here. Ordering was relatively simply. Hope is a little lower than I thought going in but their best wins are Northwestern and WashU. I thought the teams ahead of them had a better significant win.

I was a little surprised I had WashU so high but they have been on a great run of late and just finished a great weekend. They have a loss to Northwestern but I decided to break these two teams apart just because of the recent WashU run. I’m not sure I like La Verne as a Top 10 team. Going into this I thought they might get pushed back to the teens. Their placement is more about other teams and their results than La Vernes. Marietta just had a nice win over CWRU and have a Calvin win in the bank.

I broke ETBU and Trinity apart. Their match was a 5-set win at Trinity for Trinity but ETBU has a win over CMS while Trinity has a loss. That CMS win pushes them up the rankings. Centre is a tough placement. They have that win over CMS and a split with Transy (another team I thought of bringing back into the rankings). Their losses are to quality teams so that’s why they are this high. CMS has losses to three teams ahead of them in the rankings. Their best win is Trinity and Trinity hasn’t been at their best of late.

Northwestern stays in the rankings despite 5-losses (4 good losses) because of their win over WashU. Decided to go with another directional school with Southwestern slotting into 16. They had a solid win over Trinity but did take a loss to Hardin-Simmons two weeks ago.

North Park just took a loss to Calvin so these teams are linked here. Not excited about either team’s wins right now. Trinity stays in the rankings at 19 on the back of that ETBU win. I’m still not excited about CWRU and they took their first loss this weekend. Still, enough to be here. I talked about Colby. Gust Adolphus and NYU were two teams that hung on by a thread this week. GAC just has some great losses and some strong wins. NYU’s best win is Stevens. I think everyone is overvaluing them right now. I didn’t spend a lot of time ordering these last 4 teams.

I do have Ned’s and the Latvians’ NPI dumps and they agree. Ricky posted the Top 200 from Ned and even did a Top 10! Our top 8 teams agree although slightly different ordering. We actually agree on WashU at 9, too. Our only difference is he has Southwestern at 10 while I have La Verne. That may have just been him giving me another love letter. Anyways, check him out!

Oh…my NPI stuff will be up shortly.