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With an eight match winning streak and a 16 set winning streak, there was pretty much zero chance that Marquette volleyball was going to drop out of the top 10 when the new AVCA top 25 poll came out on Monday. That was proven true, and in fact, the streak of W’s for head coach Ryan Theis and team may have paid off. The Golden Eagles moved up a spot in the top 25 this week, and they are now the #9 team in the country.
Marquette is the beneficiary of Big East rival Creighton taking a straight sets loss to Villanova over the weekend. That knocked the Jays out of the top 10, leaving a gap at #9 that needed to be filled. Not much else changed in the top 14, so the Golden Eagles and BYU are now both in the top 25.
The Golden Eagles have 1,031 points this week. That puts them quite a bit behind #8 Penn State at 1,179 points and just barely in front of BYU at #10 with 1,016 points. There’s a pretty decent drop from there to #11, but just know that things got a little dicey somewhere along the way.
Baylor remains the top ranked team on Marquette’s schedule, as they have been for the last several weeks. The Bears picked up one first place vote on their way to being ranked #3 again this week. Wisconsin dropped three spots to #7 in the new poll following a Friday loss to an otherwise .500 Ohio State team in Columbus. You can tell that’s an ugly loss for Wisconsin because Ohio State is .500 overall, not just .500 in the very difficult Big Ten. We already mentioned BYU at #10, and Creighton is down at #14 following their loss to Villanova. #25 Illinois is about to drop out of the top 25 altogether after suffering a 3-1 loss in Ann Arbor to Michigan over the weekend. Hey, remember what I said about Ohio State and Wisconsin a second ago? I take it back, because Illinois is now 12-11 on he year and 7-7 in Big Ten play. Why doesn’t Ohio State get to be ranked with basically the exact same record??
Marquette returns to action on Friday night when they host Georgetown at the McGuire Center. Allie Barber’s first kill of the match will be the one that moves her past Theresa Coughlin and breaks the program’s all-time career kills record, so make sure you’re in your seat long before 7pm for first serve. Saturday’s match against Villanova shapes up to be a doozy as well, given that the Wildcats just knocked off Creighton and opened the door to a Big East title for the Golden Eagles.
You can check out the entire top 25 right here.