Suuuuuure you do. Says the guy who's been banned from here 80 times. LOL. Here, let me help you. Spoiler, its going to hurt:
@Number1CanesFan wrote:
You are correct on geography as a priority, but incorrect in seeding beyond 16. We all know the top 16 seeds are seeded nationally. The committee does try to keep teams within a region as a priority. We've played UF and other Florida schools in regionals when they have qualified. We would have had UF in our regional if they weren't hosting.
The committee puts teams into the 16 regional geography buckets, There will be teams that get moved for several reasons such as same conference, too many teams in their closest region, or no team in their region.
ND had no close region to play in. Their closest region would have bumped some other team that was closer to the host than ND.
UCLA and Arizona's closest geographic hosts are Stanford and Oregon State, but could not be placed there as conference opponents.
So, all the remaing teams that had no region or pushed out of a region had to go somewhere and here's where the committee ranks them. They didn't just draw from a hat. You know this because you have ND going to #16 Georgia Southern and UCLA going to #14 Auburn and Arizona going to #7 Miami. ND was higher ranked, better RPI than the other 2. UCLA finished with a better conference record and won 2 of 3 against Arizona even though Arizona had the better RPI. So, these teams are in an lower or higher seeded regional based on how the committee ranked them.
You also have a ranking and seeding of the lower seeded teams. This is why Canisius is in Miami and not in Maryland which is much closer. You have Hofstra, Army and Long Island all less than 20 miles apart with Canisius in the same state. They weren't just randomly thrown into other regions.
Hofstra RPI 117 --> #10
Long Island RPI 135 --> #15
Army RPI 154 --> #11
Canisius RPI 169 --> #7
So, Miami with the better seed, got the weakest of the #4 seeded teams in the Northeast.
Hofstra is the outlier here as they were sent to #10 and not #15, given they have a better RPI than Long Island. The reason they're in the #10 regional is because they lost 3 of 4 head to head games to Long Island. Clearly there was some type of ranking going on here. It wasn't randomly chosen.
So, the teams are selected by geography. They are also seeded within each regional 1-4 and the remaining teams not fitting are seeded which is why we see them all over the country playing teams based on some seeding rank.
What is unclear is how the committee ranks the teams in the initial regional buckets. They either put teams into regional buckets an then rank them or they rank all 64 teams, but place them geographically. In either case there is a ranking with geography in play.
We can also hypothesize. For example, If Miami were the #1 seed, and Florida was #17 followed by UCF at #18, I'm certain the committee wouldn't have them playing in our #1 region just to keep geography making UF a #2 seed and UCF (they're not in - hypothetical) a #3 seed. They would send them elsewhere as both being #2 seeds or maybe keep UCF at #2, but definitely not both. So, clearly there is a ranking of the teams to assign a seed to be placed geographically.
This should clear the air on whether teams outside of the top 16 get ranked and seeded. I've proved that the committee ranks them. We just don't know their formula as it relates to geography.