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Is Arizona State a Top-Ten Team? 🤔
The Sun Devils have beaten the No. 2 team in the country and the No. 14 team inside eight days, and every ranking used to describe them was published on 10 August.
Nine points across three sets is the whole distance between what Arizona State is and what it looked like on Saturday. No. 20 USC swept the No. 12 Sun Devils 3-0 (25-23, 25-21, 25-22) in Sioux Falls.
Two points, then four, then three, at the Sanford Pentagon. Arizona State had spent the previous eight days beating teams ranked above USC, and it lost this one by less than half a set's worth of margin in total.
Arizona State is 2-1, and the two wins are why this is a question at all. On 22 August it beat No. 2 Texas 3-1 in Texas's season opener, holding the Longhorns to .065.
The setter running that offense was a freshman playing the first match of her college career, and she came away with the MVP award. Six days later the Sun Devils swept No. 14 Minnesota 3-0.
Arizona State credits that sweep to a career high from Una Vajagić. Minnesota went out the next evening in the same building and beat No. 13 Creighton 3-0, in sets nobody has published.
Take the eight days as a web rather than a line. Creighton beat No. 9 Purdue in five, Minnesota beat Creighton, Arizona State beat Minnesota, and USC beat Arizona State.
Every ranking in that chain comes off a preseason ballot the AVCA published on 10 August and has not replaced, and the association announces no date for the next Division I women's poll.
Our verdict is that Arizona State is a top-ten team and Saturday does not change it, because beating the country's No. 2 in four sets is a harder thing than losing three sets by two, four and three.
USC is 1-0 and Arizona State is 2-1, and the ballot both of those records get measured against is three weeks old. When it finally moves, Arizona State should go up rather than down.
