I went ahead and took the Master Seed List and applied the Bracketing Rules to it to see what the Committee did right and what they did wrong. Here are the results:
1. The obvious first one is the decision to place Kansas in the South when the school is closer to Chicago. This could have been done to give 2 seed Michigan State the chance to go to Chicago, but it also resulted in Virginia (a 1 seed) having to go to Chicago which is further than Louisville. It makes no sense.
2. Next up, Villanova was #7 overall and could have been placed in Philadelphia. The Rules say they should have done this as it was a permissible site. Yet the committee shipped the Wildcats to Louisville and gave Xavier (#8 overall) Philadelphia. It should be noted that Xavier is within a fairly easy bus ride of Louisville and will have to fly to Philly. It made no sense unless the committee didn’t know its own rules and thought Villanova was not allowed to play in Philly.
3. The top 16 seeds were all sent to the appropriate first round sites. I have no complaints there.
4. Iowa was above Oregon State as the third of four 7 line teams. Iowa is closer by a few hundred miles to Oklahoma City than Brooklyn, yet they were sent to Brooklyn. Oregon State is almost 1000 miles more to Brooklyn than Oklahoma City so this flip makes sense as neither school was within driving distance of their site and it prevents Oregon State from having to travel all the way across the country.
5. While it made sense on the 7 line, the committee then did the exact opposite on the 8 line. It is actually about 100 miles closer for Texas Tech to go to Spokane than to Raleigh (though each is a long flight). However, Texas Tech was sent to Raleigh and Saint Joe’s was shipped to Spokane. Going by travel distances, those teams should have been flipped to begin with, and going by whatever logic they used on the 7 line, they certainly should have been flipped. Poor St Joe’s — another Philly team screwed over it seems.
6. The 10 line sees Syracuse and Dayton playing a rematch of a 2014 tournament game which is supposed to be avoided if possible. I consider this a very soft rule and there were matchup problems on the 10 line anyhow as 7 seed Wisconsin played 10 seeds VCU, Syracuse and Temple all in the regular season, meaning that Pitt had to be their opponent. Dayton and VCU also could not be matched up because they are in the same conference. I am more than ok with allowing this game to happen.
7. Placing the 11 seed First Four games was tricky because Wichita State played Tulsa in the regular season as well as 6 seed Seton Hall. They also played 6 seed Notre Dame in last year’s tournament. The committee actually got it right by flipping Michigan and Wichita State and sending them to the regions that were chosen.
In all, I have less complaints about the bracketing overall than I did last year, but the things done on the 1 and 2 lines still make no sense, and I really think St. Joe’s got screwed.