All Time Top Women's Volleyball Programs

[SaltNPepper]

I thought it might be fun to come up with a list of the best Women's Volleyball Programs of all time. I thought I could get a fairly objective list by taking the final AVCA Coach's Poll point totals and add them up for each school. This starts in 1982, so it first of all is biased as it does not recognize the good programs in the late 70's. Next, I had to make some adjustments/estimates because in the early years of the poll they only had 20 teams and not 25 and then the point totals were not always published. And for about 4 years they had 65 rather than 60 coaches voting. But even with those limitations, I think this gives a pretty good starting point for discussion.

The raw data I worked with is at: www.loamaire.com/AllTimeAVCAPoll.htm

There were some surprises fror me, like I thought LBSU would be higher and I didn't think BYU would be so high. And great teams now (like Washington) are penalized quite a bit for not being a top program throughout this 26 year period.

I assigned a relative rating to Stanford of 100 and every one elses rating is compared to Stanford.

Rank	School	Rating
1	Stanford	100
2	Nebraska	93
3	Hawaii	88
4	UCLA	86
5	USC	70
6	Pacific	70
7	Penn State	68
8	Texas	63
9	BYU	56
10	Florida	55
11	LBSU	54
12	UCSB	48
13	Arizona	38
14	Ohio State	35
15	Wisconsin	30
16	Pepperdine	29
17	Illinois	29
18	Washington	27
19	Colorado State	25
20	Cal Poly	23
21	San Diego State	23
22	Arizona State	22
23	Minnesota	21
24	San Jose State	21
25	Texas A&M	20

Would welcome comments on who's too high/low or who needs to be added/omitted and why.

[silversurfer]

Arizona seems WAY too high, as well as ASU, don't they?.

[StuffU]

It is surprising to see Long Beach State so low with 3 national championships. But it just goes to show how difficult it is to maintain a consistently superior standard.

[silversurfer]

jus4me28 said:

It is surprising to see Long Beach State so low with 3 national championships. But it just goes to show how difficult it is to maintain a consistently superior standard.

I'd imagine they would have been higher if not for the past few years.

[StuffU]

silversurfer said:

jus4me28 said:

It is surprising to see Long Beach State so low with 3 national championships. But it just goes to show how difficult it is to maintain a consistently superior standard.

I'd imagine they would have been higher if not for the past few years.

Perhaps, but BYU has no national championships and one final four (maybe two, but i don't recall). They haven't been lighting up the volleyball world recently either, yet they must have been maintaining a consistently high standard over those 26 years to be in the top 10.

[baywatcher]

Statistically there is a large drop from Stanford/Nebraska down to Hawaii, then another huge drop, to 70 down to USC. Very significant, math-wise. It would be difficult to show such dominance in other sports, unless very specialized, like Lacross, Water Polo, etc. Interesting the gap is so large. Also shows West Coast bias on the part of the voters, as well as large respect for Nebraska. Teams like Pepperdine, San Jose State, San Diego State, etc. probably get in because they are on the West Coast and the voters will stick with them in top 25 longer then they would similar programs back east or in the midwest.

[JHAM]

Interesting. Would also be cool to do a chart since 2000 or even the last 10 years to see how the two compare (ie: which teams are on the rise and which are on the decline)

[StuffU]

baywatcher said:

Statistically there is a large drop from Stanford/Nebraska down to Hawaii, then another huge drop, to 70 down to USC. Very significant, math-wise. It would be difficult to show such dominance in other sports, unless very specialized, like Lacross, Water Polo, etc. Interesting the gap is so large. Also shows West Coast bias on the part of the voters, as well as large respect for Nebraska. Teams like Pepperdine, San Jose State, San Diego State, etc. probably get in because they are on the West Coast and the voters will stick with them in top 25 longer then they would similar programs back east or in the midwest.

I wouldn't say it is west coast bias hitting this analysis. Teams outside of the west coast in the 80's weren't nearly as strong as the teams on the west coast. In recent years, the parity across the country has changed that, but his list encompasses 26 years worth of polls, about half of which were when the West coast teams were much stronger.

San Jose State used to be a strong program, having made the final four in the early 90s. The talent that is now being spread out across the country (or stayin home at Big 10 and Big 12 schools) is probably having the biggest impact on schools like San Jose State and San Diego State.

I would imagine that the same poll covering second 13 years would yield less west coast teams and more teams from the Big 10, 12, and SEC, versus a poll of the first 13 years.

[roy]

Not a bad list. One very tiny criticism is that this should read for just NCAA volleyball. The numbers are going to change drastically if you are talking about volleyball pre-1981. You have to start counting AIWA titles for UCLA, Hawaii, Long Beach, USC and even Utah State.

[beachmaster]

It is always fun to see how numbers are played out and what criteria is used, but I do not think that the ranking of the all-time best programs should be based upon the consistency of ranking in the top 25. As an example, a team could be ranked 15 every year and make the sweet 16's and be rated higher than a team that makes the final four every three years, but is out of the top 25 on some of the non final four years. The team making numerous but varied final fours should be ranked higher than the consistent sweet 16 participant.

[nodisrespect]

Ludicrous poll.

[tsunami]

BYU ahead of Florida and LBSU? There's something wrong with that. I know that LBSU hasn't been playing the type of volleyball they're known for but, that's just too low for them. Florida has been a consistent top 10 program since Mary took over a decade ago that should count for something. I also don't agree with Texas being that high, they have been in and out of the top 25 after that national championship year in 1988. They were again contenders with Demetria Sance in the mid 90's, Runner-Up in 1995, and just recently with this very talented young team. But that's just my opinion.

[roy]

tsunami said:

BYU ahead of Florida and LBSU? There's something wrong with that. I know that LBSU hasn't been playing the type of volleyball they're known for but, that's just too low for them. Florida has been a consistent top 10 program since Mary took over a decade ago that should count for something. I also don't agree with Texas being that high, they have been in and out of the top 25 after that national championship year in 1988. They were again contenders with Demetria Sance in the mid 90's, Runner-Up in 1995, and just recently with this very talented young team. But that's just my opinion.

But that is part of the poll. As pointed out by beachmaster and others, the methodology is not without it's criticisms, however unless someone can come out with a better way of looking at the list, it looks pretty good based on the spectrum of a 25 year span. I think this is probably the best way of looking at the information we have. You can't go off of the NCAA tournament as the tournament was regionalized before 1995. Teams like Hawaii, Pacific, Long Beach, Cal Poly, and UCSB were all aligned in the same regional to the Final Four. Likewise, almost all the Pac 10 teams and teams like BYU were aligned in the same region. Then the "non-west coast" teams were aligned together, with Nebraska, Texas, and Florida aligned with one another. The final bracket was usually the Big 10 teams and usually the other top Pac 10 team in UCLA or Stanford. This is how teams like LSU and Texas-Arlington ended up in the Final Four. And after the tournament, poll voters knew which teams were still the top teams who were in each others bracket and voted them higher than their performance in the NCAA tournament.

Florida has done great since Wise took over in 1992, however based on what we have, Florida did nothing before that. BYU was a consistent top 15 team for years. More times then not, they were in the top 10. Granted, they fell out in the past few years, however pre-2000, they were a definite threat to a top 10 team. On the other hand, Long Beach was a complete non factor before 1989 and after 2001. Texas may not have competed for a national title many years, however like BYU, they were a consistent threat in the top 10.

Truthfully, the top 4 in Stanford, Nebraska, Hawaii, and UCLA have been the most consistent programs in the past 25 years. Obviously, they have had their up and down years, however they have pretty much maintained consistent programs.

[hwnstunner]

San Jose St, San Diego St. and Illinois are surprises to me! I know the two California schools were strong before, but strong enough to warrant a top 25 in ANY poll? wow.

[SaltNPepper]

beachmaster said:

It is always fun to see how numbers are played out and what criteria is used, but I do not think that the ranking of the all-time best programs should be based upon the consistency of ranking in the top 25. As an example, a team could be ranked 15 every year and make the sweet 16's and be rated higher than a team that makes the final four every three years, but is out of the top 25 on some of the non final four years. The team making numerous but varied final fours should be ranked higher than the consistent sweet 16 participant.

This is really at key issue. I think that a major flaw in these polls is the fact that teams are given points from 25 to 1 with 1 point increments between each position in the ranking. That is like saying the difference between the level of play between the first place team and the 10th place team is the same as it is between the 10th place team and the 20 place team. And generally, most of us can agree that the drop off is greater between teams near the top each year than it is farther down the in the polls.

It would probably be better to come up with a different model for assigning points to the top 20-25 teams annually. Say something like 100 for 1st; 80 for 2nd; 65 for 3rd 55 for 4th; 48 for 5th; 43 for 6th and so on where the differential keeps get smaller between the teams as you go down in the rankings.

The big problem that I have with that is that what we would end up doing is manipulate the points assigned until we end up with the desired results (like moving Long Beach into the top 10 and moving BYU out of it). And all of a sudden, most of our objectivity is gone as we now have a ranking that we like.

I also agree with what roy said about calling this "all time" when it is really only "NCAA era". This is a little before I started paying attention to VB. Were there polls or final season rankings annually in that 1977 to 1981 period? I'd prefer to had those years in to this if it's available and keep the all-time designation. I don't think it would change Stanford's position, but I'll bet Hawaii would probably take over #2 and there would be other significant shuffling of the teams.

I also have been thinking a bit about why certain teams were relatively quick to build a strong volleyball program after Title IX. Women's volleyball was already a big deal in California so one would expect to have seen a lot of west coast teams in that first decade or so. But as I look at the names of some of the other teams (like Nebraska or Penn State or Texas) it seems that many of them also had strong football programs at that time and thus they had "more" money available to start building programs. Or more to lose if they didn't try to comply with Title IX quickly. I wonder if anyone has ever done any kind of historical analysis of this.