Marquette Ranked #12 In The AVCA Preseason Top 25 Poll

The AVCA Preseason top 25 poll is out for women’s college volleyball, and as expected, Marquette is a part of the rankings heading into the 2023 season.

As announced on the Six Rotations podcast/live show on YouTube, Marquette is the #12 team in the country to start the season! It is the highest preseason ranking in program history.

The Golden Eagles snagged 768 points in the polling to end up there. Florida received 841 points to end up one spot ahead of Marquette at #11, while San Diego is just eight points behind MU at #13 to start the year.

While this shows that the preseason expectations are high for Marquette — they finished last season at #13 in the final postseason poll — it’s clear that Ryan Theis is willing to test his volleyball team. We were pretty sure that the non-conference schedule was stacked with great matchups based on what the teams did last year, but the preseason rankings drives that point home.

Here’s who lines up against Marquette before Big East play starts:

#2 Wisconsin
T-#5 Pittsburgh
#9 Oregon
#16 Purdue
#24 Western Kentucky

Those first three matches will all be contested in Milwaukee. Marquette will host Wisconsin — maybe #1 Wisconsin? — on September 13th at Fiserv Forum (and there are some tickets still available), while they will welcome Pitt and Oregon to the McGuire Center. Purdue will be part of an event hosted by Kansas, while Western Kentucky is Marquette’s very first match of the season down in Dayton, Ohio.

We came very close to having seven Marquette non-conference opponents in the preseason top 25, as Kansas and Tennessee are at the unofficial #26 and #27 spots in the poll. They’re just outside the top 25 for now, but since those matches are on September 2nd and September 10th respectively, it’s very possible that the Jayhawks and the Vols will be ranked when those matches happen in Lawrence and in Milwaukee respectively.

Creighton is the only other Big East team to earn a vote in the poll, which shouldn’t be a surprise to you if you’ve been following college volleyball long enough. The Bluejays are at #18 in the preseason top 25, coming in about 65 points short of #17 BYU and over 130 points ahead of #19 Houston. MU’s two dates against the Bluejays are set for October 6th in Milwaukee and November 5th in Omaha.

Marquette will get the 2023 season started with two matches on Friday, August 25th. First up is #24 Western Kentucky at 10am Central time, while Drake will be the competition starting at 4pm CT. Both matches are hosted by Dayton, and the Golden Eagles will see the Flyers on the court on Saturday, August 26th, with first serve scheduled for 5pm CT.

You can check out the entire top 25 right here.