Marquette Volleyball Slips In New AVCA Poll

It was bound to happen eventually.

In fact, the odds were that it was going to happen exactly right here.

For the first time this season, Marquette volleyball fell in the AVCA poll from the week before. Last week, MU was #18, now they’re #19 heading into the next weekend of action.

There’s nothing wrong with being #19 in the country, and in fact, you can’t really blame the AVCA voters for dinging Marquette for a home loss to #10 Creighton. Normally I’m not a fan of penalizing a ranked team for losing to a better team in the poll, but the fact of the matter is that the Big East regular season title was all but decided when the Jays left Milwaukee with their second win over the Golden Eagles this season. That probably does deserve a penalty in the poll.

Marquette picked up 504 points in this week’s poll, nestling in between #18 Washington State with 564 points and #20 Missouri at #332 points. Well, maybe that’s not really a nestling, given how far away the Tigers are. MU had 549 points last week, so they’re not all that far down the pike.

BYU continues their run at #1 in the country, although it continues to slip as they’re down to just 52 first place votes. Wisconsin moved up two spots to #5, and Creighton finally shook off that #10 ranking to move to #9. USC stayed steady at #15, and Northern Iowa finally made the jump into the poll, finishing with 86 points to tie for 25th place with Tennessee. Baylor aren’t that far away from the top 25, earning 58 points to be the unofficial #28 team in the country.

Marquette returns to action this Friday night when they take to the road to visit Villanova. They’ll be back at it less than 24 hours later in Washington, D.C., when they play Georgetown on Saturday. If the Golden Eagles return from their weekend jaunt with two wins, they will have clinched a Big East tournament berth with four matches left to be played.

You can check out the entire top 25 poll right here.