Penn State fans may be optimistic, but the Nittany Lions won’t will start the 2017 sitting on top of the polls, as they received the #6 pre-season D1 ranking from the AVCA.  These pre-season polls tend to rely a great deal on the final rankings from the previous season — how could they not?  No team has played any matches, and many voters aren’t fully up-to-speed on who graduated and who’s coming in for most of the teams.

At worst, though, the pre-season poll (or any AVCA poll, for that matter) serve to generate interest.  So that’s good.  Below is a table with the AVCA preseason rankings (which we include merely to generate interest):

2017 Rank	School	Points	2016 Record	2016 Final Rank
1	Texas	1547	27-5	2
2	Stanford	1533	27-7	1
3	Washington	1370	29-5	7
4	Minnesota	1349	29-5	3
5	Nebraska	1313	31-3	4
6	Penn State	1249	24-10	10
7	Wisconsin	1145	28-5	5
8	Kansas	1085	27-3	12
9	Creighton	1007	29-7	9
10	BYU	975	29-4	8
11	North Carolina	939	29-4	11
12	Florida	925	27-4	15
13	UCLA	866	27-7	6
14	Kentucky	654	23-8	23
15	Florida State	641	26-6	13
16	Michigan	615	24-11	14
17	Michigan State	523	25-9	19
18	Oregon	498	21-10	21
19	Missouri	424	27-6	16
20	Hawai'i	343	23-6	17
21	Ohio State	332	22-13	18
22	San Diego	287	24-6	22
23	Utah	203	20-12	25
24	Arizona	174	20-15	20
25	Purdue	147	19-14	__