John Whelan wrote:
 
> J. Michael Neal writes
>
> > They were faced with
> > exactly the same situation as last year, and made exactly the opposite call.
>
> Not quite:  last year the question was whether to switch the #4 team
> out of a region instead of #5, while this year with the unbalanced
> split they decided to switch #4, #5 *and* #6.  This year's situation
> was more analogous to 1997, where they did not swap three teams.
 
I'm still not seeing the difference.  I suppose that it's not *exactly* the same
situation, because of the unbalanced east/west entries in the tournament.  But for
the question at hand, it is ust the same.  Last year, Ohio State and New Hampshire
were not moved from one regional to the other in order to avoid a conference
match-up, because the committee said that they would not change a team out of
their region if they were one of the top four seeds.  This year, they did move a
#4 seed from east to west in order to avoid the match-up, exactly what they said
last year they wouldn't do.  If anything, this was more egregious, since the other
#4 seed (Denver) got moved to the east regional even though that did *not* avoid a
conference match-up.  I suppose the argument here is that, considering the
distance, it doesn't really make any difference to DU which regional they're in,
but I used that argument two years ago as well, and had it thrown back in my face.
 
J. Michael Neal
 
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