Opening of 2013 Women's College Season

The 2013 women's college season gets underway today. ESPN "W" (for women's sports) writer Mechelle Voepel has a pair of articles (here and here) previewing the season, so I'll just add some brief remarks at this point. I've put together the following chart, showing the preseason polls for three major outlets: the American Volleyball Coaches Association, ESPN W, and Volleyball Magazine (you can click on each column heading to be taken to the full reports on the preseason polls). The polls are identical in their top three. Further, the same 10 schools appear in all three polls' Top 10.

	AVCA	ESPN W	VB Mag
1	Texas	Texas	Texas
2	Penn St.	Penn St.	Penn St.
3	Stanford	Stanford	Stanford
4	USC	Minnesota	USC
5	Washington	USC	Minnesota
6	Minnesota	Florida	Washington
7	Michigan	Oregon	Michigan
8	Oregon	Michigan	Nebraska
9	Florida	Washington	Oregon
10	Nebraska	Nebraska	Florida

Defending NCAA champion Texas, which returns front-court stars Haley Eckerman (outside), Bailey Webster (outside), and Khat Bell (middle), is the consensus preseason No. 1. The Longhorns' main loss from last year is versatile Sha'Dare McNeal, who hit .364 and recorded 2.41 digs per game as a senior last year, both second-highest on the team (on hitting percentage, I'm excluding a player with only 25 attempts all season). In addition, McNeal's 0.85 blocks per game were third on the squad. Texas opens up the season tonight at Hawai'i, in a match that starts after midnight for those of you in the Eastern and Central time zones.

Another interesting opening-night match features USC at Purdue. The Trojans return nearly all of their top players from a year ago, led by OH Samantha Bricio. The same can't be said for the Boilermakers, with Ariel Turner having moved on. Turner alone took 37% of Purdue's hitting attempts  a season ago (1622/4347); further, no other Boilermaker was within 1,000 spike attempts of Turner.