Washington remains #10 in coaches' poll; UCLA is new #1

All of last week’s top 5 lost, so coaches in this week's AVCA poll vaulted #6 UCLA to the top spot. Worth noting that UCLA’s three losses are to unranked Arizona (Washington swept the Wildcats this season), to #14 Pepperdine and to Washington. The Huskies and Bruins square off in LA this weekend.

Seven different teams received first-place votes this week, which could be a record.

Easy to spot the coaches who don’t really treat the poll seriously: Someone voted Illinois #1 after it lost again, this time at home to 13-8 Minnesota. Someone else voted for Penn State, despite its five losses this season. And there are two first-place votes for Hawai’i, which mostly plays teams that would have a hard time cracking the top 50.

Florida did not drop far enough, after losing twice this weekend. At a minimum, they should be below Kentucky, which beat Florida just yesterday and has a better overall record.

Rank	School (First-Place Votes)	Total Points	2011 Record	Last Week
1	UCLA (41)	1457	20-3	6
2	Nebraska (9)	1386	18-2	1
3	Stanford (1)	1323	17-4	5
4	Southern California (5)	1306	18-4	4
5	Illinois (1)	1245	21-2	3
6	Penn State (1)	1218	17-5	8
7	California	1179	21-4	2
8	Hawai'i (2)	1112	24-1	7
9	Texas	1027	15-4	9
10	Washington	941	18-4	10
11	Purdue	893	20-3	11
12	Northern Iowa	843	24-1	12
13	Iowa State	735	17-4	14
14	Pepperdine	655	17-5	18
15	Minnesota	630	13-8	15
16	Tennessee	578	20-3	20
17	Florida	542	17-5	13
18	Florida State	460	19-4	19
19	Kentucky	390	21-4	24
20	Oregon	372	14-7	16
21	San Diego	327	23-3	17
22	Ohio State	170	16-9	23
23	Michigan	146	16-8	22
24	Colorado State	133	17-4	25
25	Oklahoma	105	19-6	21