Marquette Volleyball Moves Up To #23 In New AVCA Poll

The big question coming out of the weekend was “How will the AVCA voters deal with Marquette volleyball’s loss to Wisconsin?” It was a reasonable question, as the #24 ranked Golden Eagles put up a fight against the #6 ranked Badgers, but ended up taking a 3-1 road loss in Madison for their first loss of the season. Do you give them credit for a hard fought match on the road and keep them in the poll? Do you ding them for a loss and drop them out?

Well, it seems like the consensus decision is “Marquette deserves to be in” as the Golden Eagles are not only still ranked in Monday’s brand new AVCA top 25 poll. Even better than that, MU picked up 20 more points than they did a week ago, and thus, they are now the #23 team in the country.

Marquette received 234 points worth of votes this week. That’s not that far from the 242 points that went to #22 UCLA, so MU might not have been that far from being #22 themselves. MU’s total is well clear of the 169 points Pepperdine earned at #24, so there was no doubt that Marquette was going to easily be in the top 25 this week.

Wisconsin holds steady in the poll, both at #6 and as the top ranked team on Marquette’s schedule this season. Kentucky are undefeated since dropping their opener to the Golden Eagles, so they’re up two spots to #14 in the new poll. Creighton sits tight at #17 for the only other Big East reference in the poll this week, while Illinois has fallen all the way to #25 now after starting out the year 1-3. Losing to Georgia Tech and Washington? Not a big deal…. But when paired with a loss to unranked Colorado? Not ideal. Hopefully the Illini get their deal figured out before coming to Milwaukee in a couple of weeks.

As for Marquette’s more current schedule, the Golden Eagles will kick off a run of 10 straight matches at home, including the final six of non-conference play, on Tuesday night. It will be Loyola-Chicago providing the opposition in the home opener for this season, and first serve is scheduled for 7pm Central.

You can check out the entire top 25 right here.