In Reply to: I assume the NCAA's goal is to minimize travel, especially... posted by Born2BBruin on May 23, 2024 at 15:41:43
when setting softball brackets. IIRC members from the same conference cannot meet until the Supers. Makes it tough when all 13 SEC members make the Tourney (7 seeded...next year will be worse with OK and TX joining). NCAA did a good job spreading the 13 SEC teams among the 16 regionals (#1 TX, #2 OK, and #6 US! did not have an SEC team in our regional). In fact, if #14 Alabama and #15 Florida State swapped spots there would be no all SEC Super. And having 7 Pac-12 schools in the mix meant none could be in the same regional (although WA/UT and STAN/CAL would have met in the Supers).
Since the NCAA pays the travel expenses (AFAIK) for a team, it seems that the NCAA is minimizing its own costs (must be cheaper to fly Liberty or Virginia Tech from Virginia to LA than flying either to the Mideast/Midwest and flying a Mideast/Midwest team to LA) rather than worrying about travel for smaller schools. CSU Fullerton (2024) and CSU Long Beach (2023) could have stayed in SoCal both times but we run-ruled Fullerton (2024) in 6 and Long Beach (2023) in 5 so both were sent to the Stanford regional. And yet a Liberty (2023) team that we barely beat earlier in the season was sent to our regional.
Totally agree, we have "no business losing to a school like GCU any year". No offense GCU.