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New Monday, new AVCA top 25 poll, new set of questions of what’s going on with Marquette volleyball’s status with the voters.
This week, Marquette slipped in total number of points from last week. A week ago, they had 33 points, this week it’s just 26. However, MU went from the unofficial #27 team in the country last week to the unofficial #26 team as Illinois got swept by then-#9 Nebraska over the weekend. I don’t know why losing to a top 10 team means that the Illini should lose points, but Marquette lost points by winning two matches, so there you go.
Illinois is the team behind MU in the poll with 21 points this week. Pepperdine is the #25 team in the country with 63 points, down one spot from last week. Relative to some other spots in the poll, 37 points between Marquette and Pepperdine isn’t very much at all, but the difference between ranked and unranked is quite the large gap.
Wisconsin and Kentucky stayed in their 1-2 spots as the top ranked teams on Marquette’s schedule. In fact, they actually stayed in the same spot in the poll with the Badgers holding at #3 and the Wildcats holding at #5. Creighton is the only other team on MU’s schedule to even earn points this week, and the Bluejays might be in a bit of trouble in the poll. They slipped from #19 to #24 this week as a result of their Saturday loss to Connecticut.
Marquette returns to action on Wednesday when they play an inexplicable Noon Central start against DePaul. This match would make so much more sense if it were at least a 2pm start. Think about it from DePaul’s perspective: Sure, this is a timesaver for both squads because DePaul can just drive up from Chicago, but they still have to arrive in Milwaukee around 10am just to get ready for warmups, which means leaving Lincoln Park at 8am if not earlier. Oh well, I’m not in charge.
You can check out the entire top 25 right here.