NCAA Women's Volleyball Week 3: Penn State Drops Out of the Power 10, Tennessee and TCU Enter

On the night of September 21, when the clock in Hai Phong had already ticked into a new day, I was still sitting in front of the screen watching the livestream of Penn State against Tennessee. My notebook lay open at the page where I had copied down the Week 3 Power 10 published by NCAA.com, and I wanted to see with my own eyes what people had been talking about in American women's volleyball. The result appeared: Penn State, ranked No. 9, lost to Tennessee, ranked No. 16, by a score of 3-1. Not a single set score was released alongside it. Only one line in the school's own recap: the loss was blamed on unforced errors.

A 60-year-old fan can still run 100 meters after a goal — that fan is me — but that night I had nowhere to run, because the match was half a world away and all I had beside me was a flat beer.

I am not telling this story to cheer for anyone, nor to criticize anyone. I am telling it because the way people read a defeat in Week 3 keeps reminding me of things about my own trade.

A ranking with no power

To understand why Penn State left the list, you first have to understand what the list is. The NCAA.com Power 10 is a ranking hand-picked by analyst Michella Chester and updated weekly. It does not decide the 64-team NCAA Tournament field, nor is it an official ballot like the AVCA coaches' poll or the RPI. The authority rests with the selection committee, based on RPI and the eye test of people who know the game. The Power 10 is only a weather vane for the week's story, something for fans to argue about and for newsrooms to write about.

Week 3 of the annual season, when teams are still playing non-conference matches, is when rankings swing most wildly. One win is enough to get your name mentioned; one loss is enough for people to write that you are sliding. Penn State had been in the Power 10 since the start of the season, and this was the first time the team left it. It was also their first defeat of the year to a ranked opponent. Put those two facts side by side and a simple point emerges: Penn State's foundation is still there; one result has simply changed how people see them.

Tennessee and TCU entered the top 10 at the same time. That two names appeared together, rather than one, says Week 3 produced a structural reshuffle, not a single-team exception.

What my notebook recorded

The report on the match offered very few numbers, and that very scarcity is the most notable fact.

Gabrielle Nichols, Penn State's setter, had 38 assists and 12 digs. It was her third double-double of the season. Ava Falduto led the team with 15 digs. Ryla Jones was named but had not a single stat line attached. There were no set scores, no service-error count, no hitting percentage, and not one number at all from Tennessee's side.

I once sat in a press room in Moscow and forgot to record the French national team coach's answers after a night of beer with a Brazilian colleague, then had to ask a young reporter the next morning for his tape. The Russia World Cup taught me this: sometimes forgetting your task is the way you remember your trade longest. But it also taught me that a report with only half the data cannot be called a complete report.

Looking at what was released, I see one signal worth analyzing. A setter with 12 digs, second on the team in defensive stats, usually means one of two things. Either Penn State defended with great endurance, keeping balls alive constantly. Or far too many balls died on her side, and the team had to transition from a defensive position. Without the team's total digs, I cannot say which is true. But my experience watching matches tells me that when a setter has to dig that much, the team is usually stretching rallies from a scrambling posture.

The unforced-errors diagnosis sits in the same gray zone. It is a symptom, not an explanation. It does not say whether the errors clustered in serving, in attacking, or in serve reception. A No. 9 team losing to a No. 16 team usually does not happen because it was tactically overwhelmed, but because it lost its execution discipline at decisive moments. A setter who both set 38 assists and dug 12 balls only reinforces that line of reasoning: the problem lay in transition, not in a total system collapse.

And this is where I want to pause longest. The biggest gap in the whole story is not the winner or the loser, but the two missing numbers: the set scores and the unforced-error count. Without them, no one can know whether the 3-1 defeat was a breathless 23-25 chase or a somewhat easy loss. Nor does anyone know whether Tennessee won on merit or on the opponent's mistakes.

This kind of one-sided stat release is not rare. It is how a school's media operation protects a ranked program after a defeat: put up the pretty individual lines, hide the bigger picture. I don't blame them. I just note it, because my job is to read the part that was not written.

One win cannot buy a whole tier

After the match, Tennessee was described as having stepped into the sport's top tier, and the win was called resume-building. I understand why people say that. Beating a No. 9 team right in the non-conference window is the best possible timing to bank resume points before conference play begins. But one win cannot buy a whole tier.

In women's sports, I am all too familiar with two-way exaggeration. People lift a young woman into an icon after one good match, then forget her the moment the next match goes badly. People call a rising program already in the top, then push it back out the next week when the rankings change. Tennessee's top-tier label, resting on a single match, is a fragile claim. It will only be confirmed if the team sustains its efficiency against ranked opponents in the coming conference schedule.

The same is true of Penn State, but in the opposite direction. Leaving the Power 10 was read as a sign of decline. The data does not support that reading. Leaving a hand-picked ranking does not change a Tournament berth. Penn State's real risk lies elsewhere: an early non-conference loss can leave a mark on the RPI resume, and that mark is what follows a team to the end of the season.

More than 5,000 people watched three former national-team players livestream, and I am no longer alone — and it was those evenings that taught me a ranking draws viewers better than a technical index. But a person in this trade has to tell apart what is compelling from what is correct.

At 60, I still believe what I have believed for forty years: a team's real value lies not in where it is ranked in a news list, but in its ability to convert chances in decisive rallies. The transfer race and the headline contracts are only a brand arms race; the lasting value usually sits with small teams that know how to keep their people and build a system. In US college women's volleyball there is no professional-style transfer market, but there is another race: the race for young recruits. A win like Tennessee's is a free billboard for that race.

That is why I am in no hurry to celebrate or to worry for anyone. I am waiting for Week 4, Week 5, for conference play to begin, to see whether Tennessee holds its efficiency against strong teams, to see whether Penn State comes back through conference wins. I am waiting for the set scores of the September 21 match to be released in full, so I can know whether I watched a chase or an easy defeat.

For me, this week's question is simpler than any ranking: is one Week 3 shock enough to rewrite the order of an entire season, or only enough to heat up a week of news?