The American Volleyball Coaches Association released its Top 25 Preseason Poll today and it looks an awful lot like the University of Hawai'i’s early-season schedule.

The Rainbow Wahine are ranked seventh in their sport’s major poll. They play No. 25 (Santa Clara) and No. 9 (UCLA) the first week of the season, Nos. 20, 2 and 6 (St. Louis, Texas and Cal) the second week and No. 5 (Stanford) the third week. They chase that with a doubleheader against Pepperdine, first among “Others Receiving Votes,” Sept. 18 and 19.
Hawai'i’s opener is next Friday (Aug. 28) against Western Michigan in the Chevron Rainbow Wahine Invitational. It is the only unranked opponent the first two weeks of the season, and it also received votes.
“We knew it was going to be tough, but we didn’t know it would be this tough ... ” UH coach Dave Shoji said. “We’ll just have to see how tough we are.
“I had this feeling a few years ago and we came out of it fine. We’ll be OK
no matter what. Two or three years ago (2007) we had a really bad loss against Michigan to start the season and we recovered. The first weekend will be difficult, but I think we’ll be ready and respond. If we don’t, we’ll put our helmets on and go back out the next week. No matter what happens win-loss wise, we’ll learn for the second weekend.”
Penn State, with five starts back from the team that won its second straight NCAA Championship in December, is ranked No. 1 in the preseason, with 52 of the 60 first-place votes. Texas received six first-place votes and Washington, ranked No. 4, the other two. Nebraska is ranked third.
New Mexico State is the only other Western Athletic Conference team that got votes, coming in 31st. The first poll of the season is Aug. 31.