new link to Wednesday’s practice thread.

It’s crazy to see how much football and the BCS changed women’s volleyball. If that was the poll this year, the Big West has three ranked teams and the WCC has four. On top of that both conferences could have another bid or two if there are other teams not that far out of the rankings.

19. from what I’ve seen at practice passing will be better. but hard to use your logic about the defense. Poor hitting percentage not always due to poor passing. Being blocked also is factored. And how many times last year did players have an open look and they hit wide? Plus if an attempt is made to hit the ball over it counts as an attempt, regardless if it had no chance of ever going over. You’d have to break down every play to see where the pass went, where the set went, where the block was to get a true number.

Not sure who among the new recruits you want to put in to pass. Maybe Granato. It’s not going to be Burns. Depending on what they want to do with Mitchem, they probably will redshirt at least one of the freshman.

Guinasso is playing well, is very toned after a summer on the beach. Has found out the problem with her knee and has been treating it correctly, which has allowed for greater mobility.

17 of the 25 are current Power 5 + ND and the remaining are Big West/West Coast/BYU. Clearly big money football has played a role in the relative success of SEC/ACC teams in volleyball, and the relative decline of the smaller western conferences. Some food for thought.

More, Cindy you mentioned Annie Mitchem a legit 6’3″, still listed at 6’2″. Is she? As you can see I’m a numbers guy.

I agree that the poll is useful for determining opinions on relative team strengths (and all the other reasons you put forth), but only after we’ve seen the teams play a few matches (like a pre-conference schedule). Then we can evaluate who is 1, 2, 3, etc. These preseason/early season polls are just plain silly. I have no matches to go off of, just the results from last year–teams have changed, last year’s results no longer matter.

Going back to my 2013 example, San Diego was beating top teams during the pre-season but was unranked to begin with. Very silly to have a poll that didn’t reflect the quality of that squad. Plus there is an anchoring effect with polls–teams have a built-in advantage when ranked highly to begin the season and can afford losses that unranked or lower ranked teams cannot afford. It’s the nature of how people vote (generally, if a team loses, it should move down and if it wins, it should move up–assuming teams around it don’t also lose/win).

That’s why I like the football championship voting. They actually wait for a few weeks of play before voting. Volleyball should do something similar.