The NCAA changed the opening round of the tournament by instituting a “pod” system several years ago to replace the standard regional format. Eight first- and second-round sites are distributed around the four regionals. Teams are assigned to first- and second-round sites so as to limit the early-round travel of as many teams as possible. Half of the teams in a pod advance into separate regional tournaments.
Don’t let the fact that I copied and pasted the preceding paragraph fool you into thinking that I have any clue what it means in general…or specifically to State. However, thanks to ADS95, I know more now than I did before the day started. Here is his analysis re-posted from the comments section of an earlier entry:
The 8 pods this year are:
Greensboro, NC; Greensboro Coliseum
Jacksonville, FL; Veterans Memorial Coliseum
San Diego, CA; Cox Arena
Salt Lake City, UT; Huntsman Center
Dallas, TX; American Airlines Arena
Dayton, OH; Dayton Arena
Detroit, MI; Palace of Auburn Hills
Philadelphia, PA; First Union Spectrum
Given that, I’d say that we need to be a 3 seed or at least leapfrog a couple of squads. While that may sound unreasonabe given our proximity to Greensboro, remember that last season, even a 3 seed would not have landed NC State in Charlotte since Duke and Carolina were both there with 1 and 2 seeds.
For argument’s sake, lets assume today we are the last 4 seed and look at the top 15 RPI teams (as of today) that should get located preferentially to us, and you will see why it doesn’t fit to put us in Greensboro.
Its pretty safe to predict that Duke will be in Greensboro. That leaves one open slot there.
Philadelphia looks booked to me: UConn and Villanova at 1 or 2 seeds.
Oddly enough, Memphis is geographically closer to Dallas than any of the east coast pod slots. So we will put them out there. Texas gets the other Dallas slot, which leaves Oklahoma a little miffed, but so be it. We’ll assume LSU goes to Jacksonville.
That leaves two slots in Dayton, two in Detroit, and one in Greensboro for Tennessee, Pittsburgh, Ohio State, Iowa, Michigan State, Illinois, and NC State.
Going in order, Tennesee is geographically closest to Greensboro (283 mi), but Dayton is not much further (303 mi) so we will put them there.
Pittsburgh is closer to either Dayton (260 mi) or Detroit (280 mi) than Greensboro (430 mi), so we will put them in Detroit.
Ohio State is 75 miles from Dayton. They go there.
Iowa City isn’t close to any pod, frankly. Dayton is the closest at 480 miles. My hope with them is that they get sent somplace warm instead of someplace close, so they go to Jacksonville or San Diego.
Michigan State would be a logical lock for Detroit, which books it up. They are currently 11th in the RPI, so we’d call that the third 3 seed.
Here’s where it gets interesting, and why I think we’d need that final 3 seed in order to get Greensboro.
Illinois is 235 miles from Dayton and 388 miles from Detroit. Neither is particularly close…but they are the defending NCAA runner-ups. What would be the easiest for the committee would be to place Tennesee in Greensboro and them in Dayton and putting us some place else. Unless our very close proximity to Greensboro is taken into consideration, we don’t get there as the last 4 seed. We need to get seeded ahead of Illinois at a minimum.
Since we are #21 in the RPI today, we need to leapfrog West Virginia and perhaps Northern Iowa as well, although as a mid-major they could get dropped a seed or two lower than their RPI.
