In the opening VolleyMob Men’s Top 20 Power Rankings for 2018, there was pretty solid distribution between the conferences in getting teams ranked. Two stood above the rest though on the west coast in the Big West and the MPSF.
| Conference: | # of Teams Ranked |
| Big West | 6 |
| MPSF | 6 |
| MIVA | 4 |
| EIVA | 3 |
| Conference Carolinas | 1 |
Amazingly, it’s the first year of the Big West, but that won’t prevent the conference from pushing out a plethora of quality teams in 2018. They also have top-end competition in #2 Long Beach State along with other top 10 teams in #7 Hawaii and #8 UC Irvine.
Imagine the amount of ranked teams in the MPSF if the Big West never came together too, as all six came from the league last year. That said, the losses of those six did open things up for the MPSF to add one ranked team in #16 Grand Canyon from the MIVA. Even with the departures too they boast a tie of six teams in the top 20 to start led by 2017 National Runner-Up and third-ranked BYU and closely followed by #4 UCLA, #6 Stanford and #10 Pepperdine.
The MIVA doesn’t have quite as many as the two on the west coast, but they do boast back-to-back National Champion Ohio State. #5 Lewis also gives the conference another title contender with #11 Ball State and #12 Loyola-Chicago dark horses.
The rest of the teams come from the EIVA with an appearance from Barton out of the Conference Carolinas. Among those leagues, #9 Penn State has the most luster.
Having a majority of teams from a few conferences isn’t completely new to Men’s Volleyball with just a handful of leagues, although the Big West does provide a bit more variety with familiar MPSF faces. It should make for yet another interesting season with seemingly constant carnage going on among the leagues with so many ranked teams, but because of that things should be exciting.
Leave a Reply