MPSF Leads Initial 2017 Men’s Volleyball Conference Rankings

  0 Braden Keith | April 01st, 2017 | College - Men's Indoor, Conference Carolinas, EIVA, Independents, Men's Commitments, MIVA, MPSF, News, Rankings

With the release earlier this week of the first RPI rankings of the 2017 men’s volleyball season, we can start to break down conference rankings in a more objective way.

The reality is that with only 4 conferences, the stratified nature of men’s college volleyball means that most fans could guess how these rankings would come out and be right, as compared to the women’s rankings that are a little more unpredictable. But, by looking at the average ranking of each conference’s teams can help determine just how big the difference is between the conference.

The MPSF, where 11 out of the 12 member institutions are ranked in the top 19 in the RPI (Cal Baptist at 32 is the lone exception), is far-and-away the top-ranked conference. Their teams, on average, are ranked better than 11th nationally.

The MIVA, led by #1 Ohio State and #7 Lewis University, is 2nd, keeping in mind that while the MPSF is deeper, the MIVA is responsible for the last 3 NCAA champions in men’s volleyball (Ohio State, Loyola, and Loyola).

Next year, parity across conference should improve when teams from the MPSF splits in half by way of the Big West’s adding sponsorship of the sport. That means CSUN, Long Beach State, UC Irvine, UCSB, Hawaii, and UC San Diego will all be gone from the conference (though one would presume they’ll still have a lot of cross-over in competition throughout the season

See below, each conference ranked by their average team ranking in the latest RPI rankings.

CONFERENCE NUMBER OF TEAMS Total Ranking Points Average Ranking
Mountain Pacific 12 131 10.92
MIVA 9 161 17.89
EIVA 8 170 21.25
Conference Carolinas 10 341 34.10
Independent 4 143 35.75

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About Braden Keith

Braden Keith

Braden Keith is the Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of VolleyMob.com. Braden's first foray into sports journalism came in 2010, when he launched a swimming website called The Swimmers' Circle. Two years later, he joined SwimSwam.com as a co-founder. Long huge fans of volleyball, when Braden and the SwimSwam partners sought an opportunity to …

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