AVCA DIII

[diiilbro]

Rank School (First-Place Votes) Total Points Overall D-III Last Week
1 Carthage (10) 233 24-7 15-1 3
2 Juniata (6) 226 13-6 6-0 1
3 UC Santa Cruz 206 11-7 7-2 2
4 Springfield 193 17-8 8-3 4
5 NYU 174 12-15 6-7 5
6 Stevens 168 31-6 27-5 6
7 D'Youville 136 25-11 22-9 7
8 Eastern Mennonite 130 22-11 19-6 9
9 Nazareth 109 23-7 21-6 8
10 Clarke 95 13-17 6-5 10
11 MIT 79 27-6 27-5 11
12 SUNY New Paltz 56 22-9 21-7 13
13 Medaille 34 10-14 9-12 12
14 Rivier 28 16-12 14-9 14
15 Newbury 22 28-12 28-7 NR



Others receiving points and listed on two or more ballots: Ramapo 14; Vassar 7.

[volleyballer4life]

Interesting to see Carthage's victories place them in front of Juniata. We'll see if they can stop Juniata from making history with 4 straight championships!

[Semp12]

Wierd that the NECVA tourney really had no effect on this poll besides for a few of the top teams. Newbury just beat Rivier, yet is behind them. Medaille losing in the first round would warrent them to lose their spot in the poll too. Too many of the coaches just care about the top few spots when they vote..

[The Bofa on the Sofa]

I was actually very impressed with the rankings. For example, the teams listed are the same as the top 17 in Pablo rankings, and replace Rivier with (#16) Ramapo and you have the Pablo top 15.

The top 10 are almost exactly the same, with the coaches overrating NYU compared to Pablo (Pablo has NYU below DYC). Other than that, they are even in the same order. 11 - 17 are out of order, but they are all pretty close in Pablo so their order is sufficiently debatable. Newbury is probably the most underrated yet by the coaches, and probably Rivier or New Pfaltz are the most overrated. But still, they aren't overrated by much.

[volleyballer4life]

It's nice to see some appreciation for Newbury - We were ranked at the beginning of the season, but a few meltdowns against Emmanuel/Endicott pretty much kept us out of the polls for the majority of the season following those matches. Even after beating EMU we were only "others receiving votes", although our last win against Rivier in the tournament finally got us back into the last spot.

Personally, I don't mind when we're unranked, because I'd rather come into a match with a team underestimating us. It's nice to get some recognition for all the hard work we put in this season though . Hopefully we'll prove it isn't a fluke with a strong showing at the ECAC's.

After watching the tournament, the only ones that I'd contest would be Medaille, as I think they should be unranked, and Rivier, as they lost to the team ranked right below them. New Paltz is probably right where they belong, they have a lot of young talent, and their freshman middle Holden was clearly one of the best ones at the NECVAs. They're only going to get better with time too.

[cyberVBmidwest]

I am starting to get requests for MHPR database reports (something I offer) from some of the DIII schools to check their results. Since about 98% of the entries for DIII come from me having to comb the websites every weekend (a couple of hours worth), there is a slight chance of minor errors. The report gives the schools the chance to find them and get them corrected. I do not think there should be any major changes that would impact the MHPR. Besides, Pablo is a stickler for data quality and he finds my most obvious ones (usually a match entered twice, once by each school).

[humbaby]

I find it very interesting that by virtue of beating the #2 ranked team in DIII (twice, once in five games) that Carthage leap frogs the #1 team in the nation, a team that has no losses in DIII (in fact has no losses to a DIII team in several years). I guess the voters thought Juniata had a bad week last week. Hmmmm....Juniata lost to DI #6 Penn State in 5 games and then beats DI George Mason at George Mason. I guess that loss to Penn State was what did the trick (sarcasm). Oh and CC's beating UCSC after the Slugs traveled from the west coast (the second match loss was after UCSC had an extra five game match before playing Carthage again) was much more impressive than JC traveling to Virginia to beat A GMU team that featured USA Jr National Team stud Will Price. Makes you wonder if the voters are paying attention to the scoreboard.

I think all this will do is motivate Juniata to win a fourth Molten Championship. Probably the best thing that could have happened to them.

Of course, if Carthage wins it all, then I will profess the voters to be the wisest of sages.....