When Penn State Left the Power 10: One Loss, One Tape, and the Missing Numbers

On September 21, in a college gym in the state of Tennessee, the Penn State women's volleyball team — ranked ninth nationally — fell 3-1 to the host team ranked sixteenth. The scoreboard lit up, the final whistle blew, and just hours later, the name Penn State vanished from NCAA.com's Power 10. It was the first time this season that the Nittany Lions no longer stood among the ten teams considered the strongest in the United States. One loss. One ranking. And a question almost no one in the press room bothered to ask: are we evaluating a team, or are we evaluating a single match?

I sat in my small apartment in Surabaya, replaying the match footage at two in the morning Indonesia time. On the screen, the American girls, nearly six feet two, were warming up, taping their wrists, chewing gum. Beside me lay the thick notebook I have carried for seven years. The first page of that notebook bears a name I once wrote incorrectly. I once mispronounced the name of a legend. Since then, every syllable has been an act of atonement. And tonight, I must atone once more — this time not for a name, but for a way of reading a ranking.

When I began writing about women's volleyball, an editor once told me that tactical analysis was men's work, and that women should only write about fan emotion. I did not argue. I simply wrote, and let the numbers speak. Seven years later, I hold to the same principle: I do not write a single line unless at least three concrete data points stand behind it. But tonight, looking at the news about the third week of the NCAA season's Power 10, I realized something else — that the problem is not a shortage of numbers, but the way we choose which numbers to tell the story with.

What the Power 10 Is, and What It Is Not

For Southeast Asian readers — those accustomed to the FIVB system, Olympic qualifiers, and continental championships — the context requires a brief explanation. US college women's volleyball (NCAA Division I Women's Volleyball) operates on an entirely different rhythm. There is no four-year Olympic cycle, no international transfer window, no continental federation. Its rhythm is a fall season running from late August to early December, ending in the NCAA Tournament with 64 teams, decided by a selection committee using the RPI (Rating Percentage Index) and the eye test.

The NCAA.com Power 10 sits outside that system. It is a ranking compiled and updated weekly by a single analyst — Michella Chester. It does not determine NCAA Tournament berths. It does not determine seeding. It holds no official authority. It is a measure of perception, a weekly barometer, a storytelling device.

This matters more than it appears. When Penn State "left" the Power 10, that was a media event, not a competitive one. No sanction fell on the program. No tournament berth was revoked. Only a line of text on a website, and a wave of social media commentary. But precisely because it is editorial, the Power 10 has far higher weekly volatility than the AVCA Coaches Poll or the RPI. A single result can push a team in or out — that is by design, not by error.

The third week of the season is the non-conference phase — matches outside the conference schedule. This is when teams build résumés, test lineups, and bank quality wins before entering the grind of conference play. Rankings at this stage are the noisiest, the most reversible, and the easiest to misread.

A Match Without Set Scores

In the original report, I searched and searched and could not find the score of any set. Not 25-23, not 25-18, not 27-25. Only a dry "3-1." This is the largest data gap in the entire story, and it is no trivial detail.

Imagine two entirely different scenarios. Scenario one: Penn State lost 25-23, 22-25, 25-23, 25-22 — four sets stretching to the final points, where a few individual errors decided everything. In that case, the gap between the ninth-ranked and sixteenth-ranked teams is nearly zero, and Penn State's exit from the Power 10 is an overreaction to a match any team could have won. Scenario two: Penn State lost 25-15, 25-17, 20-25, 25-19 — overwhelmed in three sets. In that case, the story is a genuine collapse, and leaving the ranking is justified.

Without set scores, we do not know which scenario we are in. And if we do not know, every conclusion about Penn State's "decline" or Tennessee's "leap" is speculation dressed in the clothes of data.

What I found in the report was one diagnostic label: "unforced errors" — mistakes not forced by the opponent. This term appears in Penn State's own recap, meaning it was issued by the team itself, not the opponent or the referee. In the volleyball world, when a team admits its own errors, there are usually two types: service errors at crucial moments, or attack errors when the ball arrives at the right spot but the swing goes out or into the net. Both are execution errors, not system errors.

But the report does not say which category dominated. No numbers. No breakdown by set. No breakdown by position. We know Penn State lost because of errors — but not which errors, where, or how many.

The Numbers Chosen to Tell the Story

What the report offers is a set of individual stats: Gabrielle Nichols recorded 38 assists and 12 digs. It was the third time this season Nichols posted a double-double — a rare marker for a setter, a position usually measured only by assists. Ava Falduto led the team with 15 digs. Ryla Jones was named without a single line of statistics.

Read the structure of this stat set carefully. It is one-sided — Penn State's only. No Tennessee figures. No team total digs. No hitting percentage. No blocks. No ace-to-error ratio. This is not a performance dataset — it is a narrative dataset, selected to highlight individuals within a collective defeat.

And from an editorial standpoint, that makes complete sense. After a loss, university media relations offices tend to protect their programs by emphasizing individual bright spots. Nichols with her third double-double of the season is a positive story. Falduto with 15 digs is a positive story. Omitting the opponent's numbers and the set scores is an editorial choice, not carelessness.

But when that choice passes through the hands of analysts, it becomes a problem. Because we — those who write about sport — tend to fill gaps with assumptions. We see a setter with 12 digs and automatically think: "Ah, the defense must have been under heavy pressure." We see a team losing to "unforced errors" and automatically think: "Ah, they lost execution discipline." But we have no evidence for either inference.

A setter recording 12 digs — the team's second-highest total — can be explained in two opposite ways. Way one: Penn State's defense collapsed so badly that balls kept flying toward the setter, forcing her to dig instead of running the offense. Way two: Penn State played explosive defense, extended rallies, and the setter herself created spectacular digs. Without the team's total digs, we do not know which.

This is what I learned over seven years carrying a notebook: a number without context is a number that lies. The number does not lie. The reader of the number lies.

"What Do Girls Know About Tactics?"

What do girls know about tactics? Enough to make them ask again. I write this sentence not to provoke. I write it because it is the real question I received at twenty-one, when I analyzed a local women's football team's 4-3-3 and was brushed aside with one line: "This piece is for a man to write."

I recount that now not to complain. I recount it because one detail in the Penn State report reminded me of it. The report says Penn State lost to "unforced errors." That is a diagnostic label, not a tactical explanation. And in the volleyball world — a sport where the world's top women's teams play systems no less complex than any team sport — wrapping a ninth-ranked team's defeat to a sixteenth-ranked team in two words, "unforced errors," is a suspicious simplification.

In elite women's volleyball, a team does not lose only to errors. They lose because the reception system breaks down. They lose because the transition speed from defense to attack is half a second slower than the opponent's. They lose because the opponent's powerful serves force them to send the ball to unwanted positions, and from there the setter no longer has enough options to distribute. None of this appears in the phrase "unforced errors."

I rewatched five Penn State matches this season looking for what the report did not say. This is what I learned after mispronouncing a player's name at the 2026 World Cup: when the material is insufficient, the journalist's job is to find more material, not to write to fill the gap. But this time, even after rewatching the footage, I still could not reconstruct exactly what happened at the final points, because I lack the full box score.

That is the limit of the trade. And I choose to state that limit, rather than pretend I know.

Tennessee and TCU: Two Names, Two Different Stories

When Penn State left the Power 10, two teams entered: TCU and Tennessee. The report called Tennessee's win over Penn State a "resume-building" victory, and declared that Tennessee is "now inside the sport's top tier."

This is a strong claim resting on a single match. And like every strong claim resting on a single match, it carries a debt.

In US college volleyball, a non-conference win over a top program has real value — it contributes to the RPI, the index that determines NCAA Tournament chances in December. So Tennessee leveraging this match to build its résumé is not a false statement. But elevating Tennessee to the "top tier" after a single win is a systematic exaggeration in how we write about women's sport.

Compare how a similar win is handled in men's football. When a mid-tier team beats a big team in qualifiers, the media says: "big win," "upset," "warning shot." They do not immediately say that team is "now inside the elite." That caution has a reason: one match is not enough to change the map. It is only enough to raise a question.

With women's sport, we tend to move faster. We want the story. We want the turning point. We want the moment. And in moving faster, we unintentionally weaken the very subject we wish to uplift — because when Tennessee loses three straight in conference play, the "top tier" story we built will collapse, and readers will remember that we once said too much.

Tactics is how people tell a story with six bodies on the court. When we tell that story with a ranking instead of six bodies, we are telling the wrong story.

The Line Between a Measure and a Verdict

There is a systematic confusion in how readers read Power 10 news, and it is not the reader's fault.

When a paper writes "Penn State left the Power 10," the ordinary reader reads it as "Penn State is no longer strong." That is a natural inference, because in most sports, appearing and disappearing from a ranking correlates tightly with actual form. But the Power 10 does not work that way. It is an editorial ranking, maintained by a single writer, with volatility designed to reflect the weekly circulation of matches rather than a long-term composite assessment.

In other words: the Power 10 is more like a weather bulletin than a court verdict. It tells you it is raining today, not that your climate has changed.

This distinction has practical meaning. If Penn State left the Power 10 due to an early non-conference loss, that does not reduce their NCAA Tournament chances — the RPI does that, and the RPI is calculated across the whole season, adjusted for opponent strength. If Tennessee entered the Power 10 after one win, that does not guarantee a deep run — only sustained conference results confirm the story.

So why do we still read the Power 10 as a verdict? Because humans love a story with a plot. A ranking without a plot is a spreadsheet. A ranking with entries and exits is a film. And films sell better than spreadsheets.

There is nothing wrong with a film — as long as we remember we are watching a film, not reading a financial report.

What the Rankings Do Not Say

When I rewatched the match, what caught my attention was not the beautiful plays. It was the silences.

Between sets, the girls sat on the bench, drinking water, no one speaking. They wiped their faces with towels. They looked at the floor. These are the moments the rankings never touch. The Power 10 cannot measure the moment a setter must decide whom to set when the team is down two sets. It cannot measure the moment a libero hesitates half a second before a powerful serve. It cannot measure the fatigue accumulating after three weeks of continuous travel across states.

In seven years of covering women's volleyball, I learned that what decides a match often does not appear on the stat sheet. It appears in how a captain walks the court between points. It appears in how a coach uses a timeout when the opponent is gaining momentum. It appears in how a substitute runs onto the court after each point to high-five.

And this is why I refuse to write a piece on "unforced errors" without more data. Because "unforced errors" is a way of saying "they broke it themselves." But no player breaks it herself. She breaks because the system gave her no better option. That system may be the reception system, the transition system, or simply fatigue after a long travel stretch. Blaming the individual is the easiest way to tell the story, and also the most dishonest.

What Is Actually Happening

Setting aside the editorial layers, we can draw a few trustworthy points from this report.

First, the Power 10 in week three changed more than just Penn State, Tennessee, and TCU. The report mentions "additional movement" but does not enumerate it, directing readers to companion pieces. This suggests the shakeup is structural in the early season, when teams are still finding identity and results are not yet sufficient to form a stable picture.

Second, the fact that Penn State left the ranking for the first time this season shows they had maintained a presence in the prior weeks. In other words, this is a team with a genuine baseline of quality, and one loss does not erase that baseline. Every analyst should remind readers of this, because the media's natural instinct is to amplify change and forget stability.

Third, Gabrielle Nichols with her third double-double of the season is a notable signal. A setter recording 38 assists and 12 digs in a loss means she is not only distributing the offense but also participating in defense. In modern women's volleyball, a two-way setter is a major tactical asset. But it can also be a sign of a problem: when the transition system is inefficient, the setter must do more than her role, and that can mask holes at other positions.

Fourth, Ryla Jones being named without statistics is a small but telling detail. An outside hitter is usually a team's main scorer. Her absence from the stat line may be an editorial omission, or it may reflect a match in which she did not contribute prominently. Without the full box score, we cannot distinguish the two.

What I Want Readers to Do After This Piece

In the newsrooms of sports desks I have sat in, there is a saying passed by word of mouth: "If you write about a loss, tell the readers the score. If you do not have the score, do not write." That sounds extreme, but it contains a valid principle: do not let readers fill the gap with their imagination.

When I read the report about Penn State leaving the Power 10, I saw a gap that large. And my first thought was not "Penn State is declining," but "I need the box score." That reflex was forged by one mistake — the time I wrote a legend's name wrong at the World Cup and realized that the smallest confusion can wound another person.

Seven years later, I am still cautious. But I understand caution should not be only defense. It should be a form of attack. When you refuse to write something unverified, you are protecting readers from an error. When you persist in finding data, you are giving readers a gift greater than a good story — the truth.

Why This Matters for Southeast Asia

There is a clear geographical distance between US college volleyball and Southeast Asian volleyball. We do not share a system, a calendar, or a culture. But we share one thing: we all struggle to make women's sport treated fairly in media.

When a US women's volleyball ranking shifts, that news spreads to Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam. Women's volleyball clubs in our region watch US volleyball to learn tactics, to learn how to build a team, to learn how to approach media. And when we read that ranking without understanding what it is, we inadvertently apply a wrong analytical model to our own context.

This is what I learned working in both Vietnam and Indonesia: women's sport in Southeast Asia does not lack talent. It lacks the infrastructure to tell the story of that talent. Our girls who play volleyball do not have 64 national teams facing off every fall. They do not have a weekly editorial ranking. They have journalists like me, who must create context themselves, find data themselves, build a story from zero.

So I write this piece not only to explain what the Power 10 is. I write to remind myself and my colleagues in the region: we need a higher standard, not a lower one, when writing about women's sport.

What the Crowd Does Not See

In the days after Penn State left the Power 10, US social media saw a wave of commentary. Penn State fans worried. Tennessee fans rejoiced. Analytical accounts filled timelines with charts and predictions.

That is the natural ecosystem of sport. And I do not intend to criticize it. But standing at the edge of that ecosystem, I see something many do not: a loss in week three can be recorded in a moment, but it will be reread for months.

In December, when the NCAA selection committee meets to decide the 64-team field, it will not look at the Power 10. It will look at the RPI, at conference results, at records against top opponents. The loss of September 21 will be placed in a larger picture, and in that picture, it may be a small scratch or a serious crack — depending on what Penn State does next.

This is why I write about women's sport with deliberate caution. Not because I do not believe in the moment. But because I believe in the season.

What I Carry from This Match

I turned off the tape at nearly four in the morning. Outside the window, Surabaya was still silent. On the desk, the notebook lay open at a page of match notes. I wrote three things.

First: a ranking is a tool, not a court. I will not write about it as if it judges.

Second: a loss is not an identity. Penn State is still Penn State. Tennessee is still Tennessee. Their real story is written in the coming weeks, not on a September night.

Third: when I do not know, I will say I do not know. That is not a weakness of the trade. It is a promise to readers.

I closed the notebook. Tomorrow, I will keep writing about women's volleyball — because I believe the girls on the court deserve to be told in true stories, with data, with depth, and with respect.

When Southeast Asian women's volleyball stopped breathing, I knew I was not only writing about sport. And when US college women's volleyball changes its rankings, I also know I am not only writing about rankings. I am writing about how we see the women playing a game history tried to keep them out of.

The Power 10 will change next week. Teams will enter and exit. There will be commentary, argument, prediction. But amid all that noise, six women will stand on a court, doing their work in silence. And that — not the ranking — is what deserves to be written about.

A thousand articles to earn a name. One misspoken minute to remember who you are. And one loss in week three to remember that a ranking never plays a single rally.