The article is very instructive regarding Creme's thinking and possibly the Committee's. Basically he says:
- If South Carolina is the #1 seed in Greensboro, then Tennessee will go to Albany -- Spokane would be too distant geographically to fit the established rules. However, that would involve the top #1 seed facing the top #2 seed in the Elite 8.
- If the committee wants to avoid that situation (despite no rule saying it can't happen), then it will move the Gamecocks out of Greensboro (to Oklahoma City) so that Tennessee can go to Greensboro as the #2 seed behind Notre Dame. That means no "traditional ACC team" (i.e., not a recent upstart like ND) will be in the heart of ACC-land in Greensboro, however, and the committee may not like that.
If in fact ND is the #2 overall seed and South Carolina is #3, then the second alternative above actually complies with the rules (assuming that Greensboro is closer in mileage to South Bend than Oklahoma City, which I don't know about). ND as the #2 overall seed would go the closest regional site to its own campus, which may indeed be Greensboro, and Tennessee as the #5 overall seed (i.e., top #2 seed) would get the "closest" regional where the #1 was not in its own conference. With ND in Greensboro, Greensboro would be that site. If USC were in Greensboro, Tennessee could not go there -- apparently there is now a hard rule against having two teams from the same conference as Top-4 seeds in the same region.
I wonder why he did not consider the option of having Tennessee go to Oklahoma City as the #2 in ND's region there, allowing the Gamecocks to stay in Greensboro. Maybe because Baylor fans would be disappointed with the extra travel?
I'm sure Vols fans will want Tennessee to go to Spokane (travel expenses be darned) to face Maryland rather than either UConn or ND. I suspect that they will NOT get their wish.
I wonder if the Committee will risk diminishing fan interest in the Greensboro regional by having the two teams playing there with no real local roots. If they could have either South Carolina or Florida State there (or both, as #1 and #2 seeds in that region), that would help attendance in Greensboro, and a UConn-Tennessee matchup in Albany would certainly juice up that region's fan interest.