D3VbWest Top 25 (Week 3)

We are now three weeks into the season and even though we had a lot of out-of-conference play, things have settled down quite a lot. This is normal once conference starts because the good teams usually just beat up on those teams but this seems early. I do have a problem because there are a number of teams outside of my Top 25 that deserve consideration but I struggled to find anyone to cast off. At the bottom of my rankings last week was Transylvania and then did suffer three losses but they were all to Top 10 teams. They also beat WashU although it appears everyone did this week as their payment came due to the devil for their showing during the East/West Challenge. How do I drop a team for beating a team that I have around 10^th in my rankings? There’s always MIT as you guys know how I feel about New England teams but they looked pretty good this weekend despite losing to Trinity. I could go Tufts as they are only 3-3 but they do have that Trinity win (something MIT couldn’t do). Mary Washington hasn’t done anything to be kicked off although their schedule is pretty meh this year. Augustana lost to Platteville who probably needs to come into the rankings so maybe just a straight swap here? Still, do I think Augustana would beat UMW or Tufts or MIT? I’ve done my initial pass through and like my original 25 but Platteville, Ithaca and Berry all need to be on and that’s not going to happen. Don’t even get me started on St Ben. Below is what I finally settled on and below the below are some additional words.

My rank, (my previous rank, AVCA rank), record; key results; P/S (for/against).1 (1, 1) Juniata 9-0, W: UCSC, Chicago, CMS; 18.2/11.4. 2 (2, 2) Hope 8-0, W: None; 18.57/13.37. 3 (4, 3) UW-Oshkosh 13-0, W: Transy, Northwestern, St Ben; 18.2/13.5. 4 (9, 10) UW-Whitewater 9-1, W: St Ben, Transy, WashU; 17.61/12.66. 5 (6, 8) Johns Hopkins 7-2, W: Ithaca; 17.74/13.70. 6 (5, 9) Emory 7-0, W: None; 18.39/11.78. 7 (8, 5) Calvin 9-1 W: Case Western, Ohio Northern; 17.15/14.08. 8 (11, 17) Cornell 8-1 W: Coe, Gust Adolphus; 15.79/14.05. 9 (10, 6) Northwestern 5-2, W: Transy L: UW-Oshkosh; 16.91/14.94. 10 (3, 7) WashU 7-4 W: None L: St Ben, Transy, UW-Whitewater; 16.95/16.22. 11 (7, 4) Claremont-M-S 6-3, W: Chicago L: Juniata; 17.5/14.0. 12 (14, 22) Mt St Joseph 9-0 W: None; 16.72/12.50. 13 (19, 18) Wesleyan 6-0 W: Tufts; 16.86/13.62. 14 (12, 23) Ohio Northern 9-2 W: Case Western L: Calvin; 17.2/14.8. 15 (13, 11) NYU 10-1, W: None; 18.58/13.07. 16 (15, 24) La Verne 9-0 W: UC Santa Cruz; 17.09 /13.12. 17 (16, NR) Ohio Wesleyan 11-2 W: None; 16.45 /13.81. 18 (22, 12) Trinity 8-3 W: MIT; 16.88/14.94. 19 (NR, 25) Ithaca 7-3 W: None L: Johns Hopkins; 16.89/14.38. 20 (18, 21) Mary Washington 9-0 W: None; 18.0/11.1. 21 (20, 20) UW-Stevens Point 8-2, W: None; 15.57/12.57               . 22 (NR, 14) Berry 6-3 W: Wittenberg; 14.54/15.90. 23 (25, 16) Transylvania 8-5 W: WashU L: UW-Oshkosh, UW-Whitewater, Northwestern; 17.11 /15.56. 24 (21, 19) Tufts 3-3 W: None L: Wesleyan; 16.46 /15.09. 25 (23, 13) MIT 8-2 W: None L: Trinity; 17.11/11.38.

Dropped Out: Augustana (17) and Gustavus Adolphus (24)

After much back and forth I decided I had to bring in Ithaca and Berry while Platteville got left out. (They are use to it since the NCAA left them out of a deserved at-large bid last year.) I wanted Platteville in but one reason was their win over Augustana. Once I dropped them, Platteville’s resume seemed weaker. They will certainly get a chance to prove themselves in the WIAC. Ithaca has wins over NYU and MIT so I really struggled keeping them out another week. Berry has that win over Transy and a couple of other good wins. The problem last week and again this week are their Points/Sets numbers. Ugh. Still, I value wins over statistics and they have played a tough schedule. Augustana’s best wins are Colorado College and Coe and their Points/Set don’t scream at me to keep them. Gust Adolphus’ best win is Coe…maybe. They both will have a chance to make it back on.

The easy part of this is the top 3. Put them in any order but the defending champions haven’t done anything to show that they don’t deserve your number one love. I moved Whitewater up this week after a great weekend. Their one loss is to Northwestern in 4-sets but they have a win over Cornell that beat Northwestern. Can’t win with any order with those three teams. I moved JHU above Emory this week despite two losses because those losses are good (Juniata and WashU the weekend they sold their soul) and their wins are MUCH better. Emory is good, no doubt, but they really haven’t played anyone too difficult (Tufts is their best win). Calvin has some nice wins but a loss to Ohio Wesleyan, which is another good team. Northwestern has wins over Whitewater and Transy and their losses are good (Cornell and Oshkosh). We really are just splitting hairs with this group of teams starting with Calvin. Cornell’s Point/Set numbers aren’t great but they have wins over Northwestern and Gust Adolphus. Heck, I’ll move them ahead of Northwestern.

Here’s where things got tougher. What to do with WashU? They played outstanding week two but lost to a number of good teams this week. Injury? Illness? Don’t know. I’m fine moving JHU above them because of their wins but I can’t do CMS because their wins aren’t as good. Big week for WashU and we’ll see if they stabilize. CMS really didn’t do anything wrong to be bumped down. It’s just that other teams did things well and I have them connected with WashU right now. Mt St Joseph is undefeated with wins over Chris Newport and UW-Stevens Point. I think if they played CMS, however, they would lose so I have them here (yeah…highly scientific). ONU has losses to Calvin and Oshkosh so nothing wrong there but their best win is probably Millikin or Carthage so this may be too high for them. NYU has a loss to Ithaca with no real signature win. Better losses by ONU put them ahead of NYU. (I reward teams that play tougher schedules.) I could have moved La Verne ahead of both of them. Best wins are Santa Cruz, Carthage and Southwestern. I’d like to see how they do against CMS. Ohio Wesleyan has a win over Calvin so I could just jump them up but they have a strange loss to Marietta (sweep). Wesleyan went to Tufts and swept them so bonus points for them with no losses. I probably have them too low so I’m going to bump them up. (Note – I didn’t bother to rewrite stuff so you are seeing some adjusting of my original ordering here. Probably confusing to you but I expect a lot from my readers so try to keep up.)

Trinity got some help this week as an outside returned from illness and looked better at times. I moved them ahead of Tufts because I do think they would have beaten them this week with the new addition. Ithaca gets the 19^th spot. Struggled where to put them and you could probably order the rest of the teams any way you want. Not sold on UMW with that schedule but didn’t want to take them down. UWSP is fine. Berry needed to go above Transy and Tufts needed to go ahead of MIT (Trinity results) so I just coupled them.

I think this puts me one team off from the AVCA. I have Ohio Wesleyan and they have Gustavus Adolphus (who I just took down). I don’t expect the AVCA to drop anyone tomorrow, but we’ll see.

As a reminder, Ricky has a Top 10 out so take a look there. He has CMS in his Top 10 while I have Calvin. Ricky, as we all know, is very biased towards the West unlike me. He also hates Calvin. One of those two things is true.