Stop whining about the Raleigh-Charlotte path

xcRacer - hilarious comment, but seriously - traveling farther does make a difference especially if it's crossing time zones, which many teams don't do often or ever during their conference schedule. It's actually one of the other reasons why the top 4 seeds in each region are placed closer to home nowadays.

Tarheels06 - with my mentioning of the 1-4 seeds all making it to the sweet 16, I was referencing someone else's comment from earlier and I think that I didn't fully finish my though - I think that it was on the East being the toughest region. The toughest region doesn't neccessarilly mean that the team that wins that region will have a tough path because often the other teams do the dirty work for the team that ends up winning the region. Plus, on the surface one region might look tougher tthan another - but these games are all about individual team matchups and some types of teams match up really well, better, or worse against their opponents. And that's often why there are so many unpredictable upsets.

So, I made a big deal out of a system that probably ain't gonna change due to money interests. It is what it is, but that doesn't make it right.

And the Heels probably drove to their first 2 sites - which is much more pleasant than going through the whole airline procedure (ok, not as bad for the teams as for us average joes, but still - more of a hassle than the nice team buses even though flights are faster concerning straight time!). Well, except for the few players that might not like car rides!

TarHeel06 - I'm extremely curious as to why you didn't mention the soon before the season assigning of the pods regionsa and such. Because I mentioned what I knew and thought was right really early on and repeatedly after that.

I know that a lot of people on here aren't practical and reasonable - ie not re-evaluating their opinion when learning of new facts. No one knows everything and even the things that we do know are sometimes wrong.

Hurricane Brian8 - your point is right on the button, why have an east pod and regional so close to each other. Carolina did deserve to be the #1 in the East with that regional being in Charlotte and the South one being in Houston.

I know that there are folks who still think that Carolina deserved to play in Raleigh due to being the #1 overall seed and that won't change. I just don't think that it's fair and practical considering the teams at the top this year.

The reason I did not mention it earlier was because most of the talk was Carolina playing in Raleigh not about a different regions pods and to be perfectly honest, I hadn't thought about it until someone else brought up Tampa pod.  The pods are assigned to their region before the season started.

LifelongBEAR, would you have had this much of a problem with it if Clemson had been the No. 1 seed and assigned to the east? Or is it just because it's North Carolina?  UNC stayed in a hotel for their first two rounds because they wanted the tournament experience.

If you ask about the pod and regional so close together what about the regional and final four near each other, it's the same thing. California sometimes gets regionals and they always have a pod.  It's not like it was decided before the season that UNC was going to being playing in Raleigh/Charlotte.  All the east teams were playing for that region.  TN could have easily gotten the NO. 1 seed, so could have Clemson, Duke, Georgetwon, Kentucky, Georgia (I'm talking before the season started), it all depended on how they played at the end of the season and UNC is playing the best. Everyone says that after UNC and Duke that there is a huge drop off in the ACC but I disagree.  They way Clemson played us in all three games tells you that they are a good basketball team, UMd is usually a good team but they floundered in the end.  UVa, VTech, GATech, BC, Miami, WF and FSU are all good teams who could beat any other team on a given day.  I'm not saying that ACC is the best conference, there are a lot of good conferences. We beat the Big 10 every year in the ACC/Big 10 challenge but they sent more teams to the NCAA tournament.

The point is the Final Four are from 4 different conferences and the four best teams no matter where they played their first four games.  Do you think it would have had a different result if UNC had played in DC?

I honestly don't care where UNC played their first two games, they would have had the same results regardless. Yes UNC had the crowd support but that didn't seem to help Texas in the elite eight.  In the end, it really comes down to the individual teams and how they play that game, the crowd can help yes, but it's not the most important thing.  If that were the case, Duke would never be defeated at Cameron, one of the hardest venues to play in.

Get you geography lessons back out buddy!

Go Heels!

None of this matters.

The Heels are undefeated on the road this year.

All the #1 seeds made the tournament regardless of how far they were away from home.

This is the way it has always been. Earn the #1 seed = you play close to home.

Dumb discussion. Don't know why I even wasted my time posting this!