The new AVCA top 25 poll came out on Monday afternoon, and YOUR Marquette Golden Eagles are standing a little bit higher in the eyes of the voters than they were last week.
Because there were two matches canceled in the wake of the death of two men’s lacrosse players, Tom Mendoza’s squad only played one match over the past week, but that was a 3-0 sweep of Western Kentucky. That seemed like a pretty valuable win at the time due to WKU 1) coming in earning top 25 votes and 2) beating then-#25 Dayton
earlier in the day on Friday before losing to MU. That idea paid off with just the one result for the voters to weight in on, as Marquette now has 37 points worth of votes after holding 18 a week ago. 37 points is good enough to be the unofficial #29 team in the country, which is also a scoot upwards from #31 last week and back to where MU was in the preseason poll. It’s kind of funny to see Marquette sitting in between Dayton at 40 points and Western Kentucky with 32 points. It’s almost as if the voters just kind of threw their hands up and said “whatever” when trying to separate those three teams.
Wisconsin moved up two spots to #6 this week to hold on to their spot as the best ranked team on Marquette’s schedule this week. Florida improved one spot to #11, as did Minnesota with their shift to #13. Creighton slipped five spots down to #18 as wins over San Diego and UC Santa Barbara weren’t enough to balance out their 3-0 loss to then-#22 USC. Upside for the Bluejays? It’s their 65th straight poll with a ranking, which is a program record.
Those are the only other teams on Marquette’s schedule other then the aforementioned Hilltoppers one spot behind MU in the Receiving Votes area. It’s important to remember as we go forward that Dayton is not on the schedule any more, as I presume that the Flyers should probably be able to drift around in the general vicinity of the top 30 all year.
Marquette is scheduled to return to action when they host three more matches at the McGuire Center this weekend. Ball State comes into town at 7pm on Friday, September 12, while James Madison follows at 6pm on Saturday and Milwaukee gets the Sunday matinee at 3pm. All three matches will be streamed on ESPN+.
