Pac-12 on Top of Week 6 Conference Rankings

According to the voting coaches in the AVCA polls, the Big Ten has the 3 best teams in the country. According to the more objective RPI ranking by the NCAA, they have 3 of the 4 best teams in the country.

No matter how one slices it, the top of the Big Ten is better than the top of any other conference in the country.

By measure of top-to-bottom strength, however, there is a better conference in the land: the Pac-12.

Below, we’ve taken the all-334 rankings from the first edition of the 2016 RPI rankings and found an average-ranking per team and ranked the 32 Division I volleyball conferences based on this average rank.

Highlights of the rankings:

• The West Coast Conference is a volleyball powerhouse, even without sponsoring football. They rank higher than both the SEC and the ACC in average team ranking.
• The ACC, the biggest college volleyball conference with 15 teams, ranks just 9th. That’s largely because Wake Forests, Syracuse, and Virginia are the 3 lowest-ranked teams among the traditional “Power 5” conferences.
• The West Coast Conference isn’t just good at the top (BYU, San Diego, Pacific, Loyola Marymount), they’re also deep. Only 1 WCC team is ranked lower than 128th in the NCAA’s Division I.