Washington climbs to #4 in AVCA Poll

The weekly American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) Division 1 Poll has just been released, and the Pac-12 still dominates.


Six Pac-12 schools made the top sixteen, including Cal (1), Stanford (2), Washington (3), UCLA (6), USC (13) and Oregon (16). We’ll check around, but we don’t recall another instance when four of the top six were from a single conference.


Illinois and Penn State break up the Pac-12 monopoly at the top. Illinois is undefeated, but two of those wins were five-set squeakers, both at home, to unranked Dayton (4-5) and Tulsa (6-4). Penn State has now lost three times, including at home to #16 Oregon, and to #2 Stanford and #8 Texas, both in Palo Alto.


Polls are often wacky … Minnesota has twice defeated Texas this season, yet the Longhorns get a higher ranking (8 vs. 9).


The full poll is here. The top ten:

Rank	School (First-Place Votes)	Total Points	2011 Record	Last Week
1	California (51)	1487	10-0	1
2	Stanford (8)	1438	6-0	3
3	Illinois	1354	9-0	4
4	Washington (1)	1296	7-0	5
5	Penn State	1151	4-3	2
6	UCLA	1116	7-1	8
7	Florida	1060	7-2	7
8	Texas	1030	3-3	10
9	Minnesota	1000	4-2	6
10	Nebraska	971	6-1	11