Marquette No. 3 in VolleyballMag.com Mid-Major Poll, Illinois St. up to 13

Unbeaten BYU and Creighton stayed 1-2 in the VolleyballMag.com Mid-Major Poll presented by the NIVC, but after that there were also sorts of changes.

Marquette moved up a spot to No. 3, trading places with Cal Poly, which sustained its first Big West defeat of the season when the Mustangs lost at Hawai’i.

UCF stayed at No. 5, Northern Iowa remained No. 6 and Denver stayed at No. 7, but San Diego moved up two spots to No. 8. Cincinnati dropped a notch to ninth and Colorado State moved up a spot to No. 10.

Other teams that made moves up included Illinois State, up three spots to No. 13 and Pepperdine, up two notches to No. 15.

This week’s AVCA Division I Coaches Poll also had some movement, although BYU, Stanford and Minnesota remained 1-2-3. Illinois moved up two spots to No. 4 and Wisconsin did the same to No. 5.

Pittsburgh, which took its first loss of the season Sunday, an ACC defeat to Duke, dropped five spots to No. 10. Northern Iowa and Tennessee made it in at No. 25. Tennessee, the third SEC team in, is ranked for the first time since 2012.

This also marks the most number of mid-majors — six teams — ranked in both polls: BYU is No. 1 in both, Creighton is No. 9 in the AVCA, Cal Poly is No. 17, Marquette is No. 19, UCF is 23rd, and Missouri Valley Conference-leader Northern Iowa, which was ranked in the AVCA earlier this season but fell out.

The top three teams in the NCAA RPI are Stanford, Illinois and BYU, followed by Minnesota, Texas (No. 6 in the AVCA), Wisconsin, USC (No. 15 AVCA), Pittsburgh, Kentucky (No. 12 AVCA) and Washington State (No. 18 AVCA). Of note: UCF is No. 11 in the RPI; Northern Iowa is No. 15; and Penn State, which is No. 7 in the AVCA is No. 16.

The 2018 National Invitational Volleyball Championship marks the second year of the revival of a Division I “NIT” event designed to bring another postseason opportunity into the sport’s calendar.
In 2017, Ole Miss defeated Texas Tech to win the NIVC title. The 2018 NIVC field will feature 32-40 teams. They will be selected after the NCAA Tournament makes announces its 64-team field. The NIVC will award berths to other deserving programs based on multiple factors, including RPI, overall record, strength of schedule and more. Much like the WNIT basketball event, matches are held at the participating schools.
The field will be announced late Sunday evening, November 25, 2018. The first round will start Thursday, November 29, with the championship match on Tuesday, December 11.
Selection — November 25
Round 1 & 2 — November 29-30, December 1-2
Round 3 — December 5-7
Semifinals — December 7-9
Championship — Tuesday, December 11, 7 p.m. Eastern

Others receiving votes and listed on two or more ballots: Fresno State, 25; Wichita State, 18; Western Kentucky, 13; College of Charleston, 12; Tulane, 7; Tulsa, 4. There were 10 teams mentioned on only one ballot for a total of 59 combined points.

The pollsters: Kristin Belzung, Stony Brook; Keylor Chan, Samford; Dietre Collins-Parker, San Diego State; Courtney Draper, USF; Steve Florio, Fort Wayne; Ray Gooden, NIU; Greg Goral, Campbell; Kris Grunwald, Connecticut; Ashli Hain, UCI Irvine; Tom Hanna, Akron; Venessa Hackett Jacobs, Southern; Justin Ingram, UIC; Mike Jordan, New Mexico State; Shaun Kupferberg, Howard; Frank Lavrisha, San Francisco; Aaron Mansfield, LMU; Don Metil, Towson; Kent Miller, Saint Louis; Anna Moreno Allison, Bucknell; Kaddie Platt, Houston; Mark Pryor, North Dakota; Dave Rehr, Arkansas State; Jim Smoot, Southeastern Louisiana; Kari Thompson, Southern Illinois-Carbondale; Jennifer Weiss, Harvard.

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About Triple Crown Sports: Based in Fort Collins, Colorado, Triple Crown Sports has been producing events in youth athletics and the college ranks for more than 35 years. TCS runs both the preseason and postseason WNIT basketball events and produces the men’s and women’s Cancun Challenge tournaments in November, which have been recognized by Sports Illustrated as a top-5 destination tournament for D-I basketball programs.

Triple Crown produces the revived “WNIT” concept in D-I volleyball (the NIVC), which relaunched in 2017, and has operated a similar event in D-I softball (the National Invitational Softball Championships) in 2017 and 2018. TCS youth fast-pitch tournaments (including the 900-team Sparkler/Fireworks event) draw the nation’s finest club programs, and hundreds of college coaches attend this TCS event and others for recruiting purposes.

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