Looks like I whipped out those year-to-date posts just in time, as the new AVCA Division I top 25 poll was released mere minutes after the second one posted. The Division II poll should be out soon as well (D-III polls are released on Tuesdays).
The new #1 team in the nation, as I expected, is Penn State, but the voters are not of one mind. Nor even close. Six different schools got first-place votes. Penn State got 34 of them, and five Pac-12 schools split the other 26, with second-ranked Oregon getting 16 and #3 USC, #4 UCLA, and #5 Washington all getting three, and #7 Stanford getting one. The margin between Oregon and USC for #2 is just seven points. Nebraska lost more ground with their defeat at Penn State than I’d have figured, falling from #3 to #6. Hawaii, Texas, and Minnesota, the Gophers jumping up from #12, round out the top ten.
You can see the full poll here. Interestingly, it has the same exact 25 teams that last week’s poll did. No one dropped out. Usually there’s at least one team toward the bottom of the poll that loses and falls away, but the closest we came to that this week was previous #21 Tennessee dropping to #25, and they still have a cushion of 40 points over the ‘also receiving votes’ leader Oklahoma.
The three remaining undefeated teams in the nation are the Pac-12’s Washington and Oregon and the BYU Cougars in the West Coast Conference. They do have one of the biggest gains of any team from last week to this, improving from #16 to #11, but they’ve evidently got a longer road ahead of them if they want serious national consideration as a top team.
And I think that just about sets the stage for this week’s action!
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