UC Irvine ranked No. 5 in men’s volleyball poll

UC Irvine, the defending national champion in men’s volleyball, is ranked No. 5 in the CSTV/American Volleyball Coaches Assn. preseason poll.

The Anteaters, who lost four of their top seven players from last year’s squad, each one an All-American, received one first-place vote.

Coach John Speraw’s unit, which collected 172 points in the voting, was ranked behind BYU (220 points and four first-place votes), Pepperdine (215, nine first-place votes), UCLA (214, two first-place votes), and Penn State (197).

Rounding out the top 10 are Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne (154), Cal State Northridge (153), Ohio State and USC (113 each), as well as Long Beach State (83).

Hawaii (No. 11), Stanford (No. 13) and UC Santa Barbara (No. 14) are additional Mountain Pacific Sports Federation representatives in the top 15.

The Anteaters, who won the MPSF Tournament last season, then topped IPFW in the NCAA title match at Ohio State, meet the University of Alberta in a Dec. 31 exhibition match at Crawford Court, before opening the regular season on Jan. 2 against Cal Baptist at Crawford Court.

UCI’s Bren Events Center is the site of the four-team 2008 NCAA Championship, May 1 and 3.

— From staff reports