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Poll Takeaways: Pitt Gains Three First-Place Votes
Nebraska held the top line with 54 of 63 and Pittsburgh has the rest. Florida and TCU climbed seven places each, the defending national champions fell to 19th, and Kansas is ranked above a team that has won all six of its matches.
Nebraska held the top line in the AVCA coaches poll released on Monday with 54 of the 63 first-place votes, three fewer than the Huskers had a week ago, and Pittsburgh has the other nine.
Nebraska is 4-0 and Pittsburgh is 6-0. The points gap between the two of them fell from 59 to 46 in a week when neither side lost a match.
The AVCA has published two polls this season, Nebraska has led both, and everything that moved this week moved underneath the Huskers.
Only Three Ballots Changed at the Top
Nebraska and Pittsburgh are the only two programmes to have received a first-place vote in either poll this season. It was 57 and six on 31 August. It is 54 and nine now.
Three coaches out of 63 rewrote the top line of a ballot in a week. Everything else this electorate did happened below Nebraska and Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh has beaten Kentucky, Kansas, Wisconsin, BYU and Utah among its six wins since 23 August. Olivia Babcock had 18 kills, 13 digs and six blocks in the win in Salt Lake City on Sunday.
Nebraska has played four matches to Pittsburgh's six. A fifth stopped at 11-7 in the first set at Wrigley Field on Sunday night with condensation making the floor unplayable, and the Big Ten has ruled out replaying it there without saying whether it resumes.
Nebraska's ranking rests on four completed matches, one of them the sweep of Texas in Las Vegas on 30 August that is still the biggest result anybody has produced this season.
Stanford Won Every Match and Fell a Place
Stanford is 4-0 and moved from third to fourth without losing. Kentucky passed Stanford at 5-1 after beating Penn State at Wrigley Field on Sunday afternoon.
Louisville moved from sixth to fifth and swept Texas 3-0 (25-12, 28-26, 25-16) in Nashville on Saturday. Wisconsin fell from fifth to sixth at 3-3.
Nobody in the top six lost a place by losing a match this week, which is what a poll looks like when it has more opinions than results to work with.
The Biggest Climbs and the Tightest Gap
Florida went from 17th to 10th and TCU from 18th to 11th, the two largest climbs in the poll. Florida is 4-1 and TCU is 3-2.
Tennessee moved from 22nd to 17th at 5-0 and North Carolina from 19th to 18th at 4-0. Both play on Wednesday in the Showdown at the Net, Tennessee against Pittsburgh and North Carolina at Kentucky.
SMU are eighth on 981 points and Texas ninth on 968. Thirteen points is the narrowest gap anywhere in the poll, and the two of them play each other in Dallas on Wednesday.
The Champions, Creighton and Kansas All Fell
Texas A&M won the national championship in December and has lost four of its seven matches this season. The Aggies fell from 12th to 19th, the steepest drop anywhere in the top 25.
Creighton fell from 10th to 15th after losing to Tulsa in five sets on Saturday, the only top-ten team to lose to an unranked opponent all week. Kansas fell from 16th to 22nd at 1-3.
Tulsa's reward is 65 points among the teams outside the top 25, second only to Georgia Tech among the unranked.
The Poll Runs Past Its Own Last Line
The AVCA publishes what the teams below 25th received, and those numbers keep ranking them. BYU is 25th with 171 points. Georgia Tech has 136, Tulsa 65 and UCLA 32.
Read the list as it is printed and Georgia Tech is effectively 26th, Tulsa 27th and UCLA 28th. Georgia Tech hosts Oklahoma on Tuesday night with the best unranked case in the country.
Thirteen teams in all received votes below the line, five of them on one ballot each for 17 points between them.
Kansas Is 1-3 and Ranked Above Colorado
Kansas has lost three of its four matches and sits 22nd. Colorado has won all six of its matches and sits 23rd, one place lower.
Oregon is 5-0 and 24th. Wisconsin is 3-3 and sixth, Texas is 3-3 and ninth, and each of those placings is a judgment about who a team has played rather than about what it has done.
Two Polls In, This One Ranks Schedules
The coaches are rewarding who a team booked in the spring more heavily than what it has done since August, and they are entitled to. A 6-0 record against nobody is worth less than 3-3 against everybody.
Pittsburgh play Tennessee on Wednesday night. Win that in straight sets and the number that moves next Monday is not the ranking, it is whether Nebraska keeps 54.
