|
Post by vbprisoner on Aug 28, 2018 14:38:06 GMT -5
I think Michigan has a great libero in Lerg and she is solid in serve receive, Welsh is a pretty good setter, and motivated because if she doesn't bring it O'Leary will be playing. Add Skjodt as your go to OH and a nice addition in Jones; along with Croker and Shannon and they have a very good team that plays good defense too.
Purdue is always a 20-25 team in my eyes. They could take down Penn St. this year, but lose to Indiana two nights later. I really should have had them at 24 because I think a healthy Colorado would beat them and with Louisville it would be a toss up.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2018 15:09:48 GMT -5
Atkinson's improvement from her sophomore to junior years was incredible, and she's taken it up a notch or two this season. Shondell's done a great job with her. Bush is also better than I thought she'd be. I was impressed with her ability to get to balls and better them. Seems pretty dynamic too.
|
|
|
Post by bayarea on Aug 28, 2018 16:15:55 GMT -5
Here's my top 25; I'm open to criticism. I'll admit upfront that my logic isn't consistent yet. I considered results, expectation before the weekend, projecting who would win if they played on a neutral court tomorrow, etc. However, I probably weighted the criteria differently in different cases. I figure this list will be volatile until conference play, but once I can watch more matches and assess their body-of-work (recent results will be given more weight), what I believe each team's floor/ceiling to be, etc., then it'll gain more traction. Later in the year I'll probably weight the rankings on who I think would win a 7 match series and give more attention to Pablo. 1. Stanford 2. USC 3. Texas 4. Florida 5. Wisconsin 6. Minnesota 7. BYU 8. Nebraska 9. Washington 10. Baylor 11. Michigan 12. Penn State 13. Illinois 14. UCLA 15. Kentucky 16. Pittsburgh 17. Northern Iowa 18. Oregon 19. Marquette 20. Creighton 21. Louisville 22. Purdue 23. Colorado 24. Iowa State 25. Colorado State I like most of your rankings. I really tried to watch as many of these teams as humanly possible. What I find interesting is to see where voters put teams relative to others in their conference. The AVCA coaches seemed to mostly just go off of W-L record, but I was thinking (right or wrong) more about how solid the teams looked in their matches. For the Pac-12, I put Stanford, USC, Washington, Oregon and then UCLA and Colorado. I didn't include Utah (who almost went 1-2 to unranked teams) or Washington State (sorry I didn't have time to watch them...my bad). But I saw a lot of USC and really liked them and their grit against good teams. I thought Washington looked very good against a supposedly good/better San Diego team...they crushed San Diego in the second match. UCLA, on the other hand, had a hard fight, twice, to beat an unranked Gonzaga team, and came a breath away from going down 2 sets to 1 in their second match. Oregon disappointed me, but they had much tougher opponents and I still think they have the talent to be great. Similarly, in the B1G, I downgraded Wisconsin because while I was watching them play FSU, they looked pretty awful at times, despite pulling out a win. At the end of the day, for all we criticize the AVCA coaches who vote, it is patently impossible to get a good grip on how every top 30 team is playing each week and to 'get it right' every time. I do think we will all get better at this after a few weeks.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 2, 2018 0:58:51 GMT -5
|
|