The end of the 2016 NCAA Division I Women’s Volleyball season is drawing near, and there’s less than a week to go before the selection committee announces the field of 64 for the NCAA Championship tournament.
While half of the field will be made up by the 32 NCAA conference champions, there are 32 spots still to be considered by the committee for at-large selections. Among the considerations of the committee will be the relative strength of each conference that the contending teams participate in.
While the conference’s average RPI is not a perfect measure for such an evaluation, it can be a guide to the depth of of the country’s conferences. It does leave some difficult decisions, however. Can the committee overcome everyone’s natural bias in favor of the so-called “Power 5 Conferences,” and reward conferences like the Mountain West, AAC, and West Coast Conference for their depth as compared to the ACC? How does the SEC, not given much respect by the AVCA coaches’ polls, stack up with the WCC once one moves past the respective conference champions?
All of those questions will be answered in just a few days. See below for the final regular season conference RPI rankings of the 2016 NCAA Division I women’s season.
See the team-by-team RPI rankings here.
See last week’s conference rankings here.
CONFERENCE | NUMBER OF TEAMS | Total Ranking Points | Average Ranking | |
1. | Big Ten | 14 | 783 | 55.93 |
2. | Pac-12 | 12 | 693 | 57.75 |
3. | Big 12 | 9 | 521 | 57.89 |
4. | Southeastern | 13 | 1152 | 88.62 |
5. | West Coast | 10 | 998 | 99.80 |
6. | AAC | 11 | 1167 | 106.09 |
7. | Mountain West | 11 | 1198 | 108.91 |
8. | Colonial | 9 | 994 | 110.44 |
9. | Big East | 10 | 1237 | 123.70 |
10. | Atlantic Coast | 15 | 1880 | 125.33 |
11. | Missouri Valley | 10 | 1406 | 140.60 |
12. | Horizon | 9 | 1267 | 140.78 |
13. | Big West | 9 | 1283 | 142.56 |
14. | Conference USA | 13 | 2262 | 174.00 |
15. | ASUN | 8 | 1433 | 179.13 |
16. | Mid-American | 12 | 2153 | 179.42 |
17. | Big Sky | 12 | 2165 | 180.42 |
18. | Western Athletic | 8 | 1446 | 180.75 |
19. | Ivy League | 8 | 1460 | 182.50 |
20. | Atlantic 10 | 10 | 1854 | 185.40 |
21. | Southern | 9 | 1733 | 192.56 |
22. | Sun Belt | 12 | 2358 | 196.50 |
23. | America East | 7 | 1488 | 212.57 |
24. | Summit League | 9 | 1928 | 214.22 |
25. | Big South | 9 | 1946 | 216.22 |
26. | OVC | 12 | 2662 | 221.83 |
27. | Patriot | 9 | 2033 | 225.89 |
28. | Southland | 13 | 3016 | 232.00 |
29. | Northeast | 8 | 2049 | 256.13 |
30. | Metro Atlantic | 10 | 2671 | 267.10 |
31. | Mid-Eastern | 13 | 3748 | 288.31 |
32. | Southwestern | 10 | 2955 | 295.50 |
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