2026 college volleyball rankings

November 3, 2026

statistical applications sports college volleyball

In a series of posts, we developed a new method for ranking college football teams. The method evolved a little over time, but it currently has three basic steps. First, all applicable teams are listed in a table in the same order down the rows and across the columns from left to right. Second, one entry is made in the table for each game; that entry can simply be a 1 to indicate a victory by the row team over the column team, it can be coded to reflect the margin of victory and location of the game from the victor’s perspective (home, away, or neutral), and it can also give more weight to games later in the season. Third, the model uses hill climbing to iteratively swap teams in the rows and columns to minimize the sum of the values below the diagonal weighted by the distance below the diagonal; in effect, the model is trying to find the ranking with the smallest degree of upsets by lower ranked teams over higher ranked teams.

Thus far, we have applied our method only to ranking college football teams. Of course, it can be applied to rank teams in any sport or activity. The model is most useful when there is a relatively large number of games, including a significant number of nonconference games, but not enough games so the standings alone can be used to rank teams.

We use the method here to rank women’s college volleyball teams. However, at least initially, we do not include all 348 Division 1 teams, which would require a great deal of both coding time and computational time. Instead, we include only the 99 teams from the top seven conferences: the Big Ten, the Southeastern Conference, the Big 12, the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Big East, the Mid-American Conference, and Conference USA.

Similar to our method for college football, we coded the games so a 3-0 set win is worth twice as much as a 3-2 set win and a road win is worth 10 percent more than a neutral court win, with a home win being worth 10 percent less than a neutral court win. We did not adjust for when the games were played in the season. So, our ranking is meant to capture the teams’ overall performance during the season, not their current performance. Following is our ranking of the 99 teams from those seven conferences.

Rank	Team	Conference
1	Nebraska	Big Ten
2	Pittsburgh	ACC
3	Brigham Young	Big 12
4	Florida	SEC
5	Southern Methodist	ACC
6	Kentucky	SEC
7	Louisville	ACC
8	Wisconsin	Big Ten
9	Texas	SEC
10	Tennessee	SEC
11	Arizona St.	Big 12
12	Oregon	Big Ten
13	Penn St.	Big Ten
14	Texas A&M	SEC
15	Purdue	Big Ten
16	Minnesota	Big Ten
17	Washington	Big Ten
18	Indiana	Big Ten
19	Texas Christian	Big 12
20	Kansas	Big 12
21	Baylor	Big 12
22	Colorado	Big 12
23	Utah	Big 12
24	Michigan St.	Big Ten
25	California Los Angeles	Big Ten
26	Illinois	Big Ten
27	Michigan	Big Ten
28	Southern California	Big Ten
29	Stanford	ACC
30	Vanderbilt	SEC
31	North Carolina	ACC
32	Marquette	Big East
33	Creighton	Big East
34	Miami	ACC
35	Missouri	SEC
36	Mississippi St.	SEC
37	Georgia	SEC
38	Georgia Tech	ACC
39	Oklahoma	SEC
40	California	ACC
41	Houston	Big 12
42	Iowa St.	Big 12
43	Kansas St.	Big 12
44	Cincinnati	Big 12
45	Louisiana St.	SEC
46	Auburn	SEC
47	South Carolina	SEC
48	Mississippi	SEC
49	Central Florida	Big 12
50	West Virginia	Big 12
51	Maryland	Big Ten
52	Arkansas	SEC
53	Rutgers	Big Ten
54	Iowa	Big Ten
55	Alabama	SEC
56	Ohio St.	Big Ten
57	Northwestern	Big Ten
58	Duke	ACC
59	DePaul	Big East
60	North Carolina St.	ACC
61	Florida St.	ACC
62	Wake Forest	ACC
63	Western Kentucky	CUSA
64	Missouri St.	CUSA
65	Bowling Green	MAC
66	Toledo	MAC
67	Miami Ohio	MAC
68	Ball St.	MAC
69	Xavier	Big East
70	St. John’s	Big East
71	Providence	Big East
72	Butler	Big East
73	Villanova	Big East
74	Georgetown	Big East
75	Connecticut	Big East
76	Seton Hall	Big East
77	Middle Tennessee State	CUSA
78	Florida International	CUSA
79	Kennesaw St.	CUSA
80	Sam Houston St.	CUSA
81	Liberty	CUSA
82	New Mexico St.	CUSA
83	Notre Dame	ACC
84	Boston College	ACC
85	Virginia Tech	ACC
86	Virginia	ACC
87	Clemson	ACC
88	Delaware	CUSA
89	Ohio	MAC
90	Western Michigan	MAC
91	Buffalo	MAC
92	Syracuse	ACC
93	Akron	MAC
94	Kent St.	CUSA
95	Eastern Michigan	MAC
96	Arizona	Big 12
97	Texas Tech	Big 12
98	Central Michigan	MAC
99	Jacksonville St.	CUSA

So, we actually needed to include only five conferences to rank the top teams. The highest ranked team from the MAC or Conference USA is Western Kentucky at number 63. We note that Western Kentucky is effectively ranked number 30 in the current AVCA rankings, as it received the fifth most voting points out of teams not ranked in the top 25. However, it is easy to understand why our model ranks it much lower. Western Kentucky does not have any wins against teams ranked above it in our model; its best win is against Pepperdine, which is not included in our model. Western Kentucky lost to all three teams ranked above it in our model, including Oklahoma, which is currently in 11^th place in the SEC and is ranked number 39 in our model.

Among the Division 1 teams not included in our model, the team that would rank highest is probably Colorado State, which is effectively ranked number 29 in the current AVCA rankings. Colorado State might rank similarly to Colorado in our model, as the teams split a home-and-home series against each other.

The table below compares the top 25 teams in our rankings with the 25 teams in the current AVCA rankings. Both rankings include teams only from four conferences. However, our model is more impressed with teams from the Big Ten (with 10 teams versus 8 in AVCA’s ranking) and less impressed with teams from the ACC (with only 3 teams versus 5 in AVCA’s ranking).

Rank	My Model	AP
1	Nebraska	Nebraska
2	Pittsburgh	Pittsburgh
3	Brigham Young	Louisville
4	Florida	Florida
5	Southern Methodist	Southern Methodist
6	Kentucky	Kentucky
7	Louisville	Wisconsin
8	Wisconsin	Brigham Young
9	Texas	Arizona St.
10	Tennessee	Tennessee
11	Arizona St.	Penn St.
12	Oregon	Oregon
13	Penn St.	Texas
14	Texas A&M	Purdue
15	Purdue	Kansas
16	Minnesota	Texas Christian
17	Washington	Texas A&M
18	Indiana	Washington
19	Texas Christian	Minnesota
20	Kansas	North Carolina
21	Baylor	Indiana
22	Colorado	Vanderbilt
23	Utah	Stanford
24	Michigan St.	Baylor
25	California Los Angeles	Colorado

We note that including the other 249 Division 1 teams in our model would likely have little effect on our top 25 teams. Our top 25 teams have only two losses to teams not included in our model: Arizona St.’s loss to California Davis and Utah’s loss to Long Beach St. So, those two teams might be ranked slightly lower if all Division 1 teams were included.