I have the latest "Principles and Procedures for Establishing the Bracket", downloaded them late last year. That's not what they say. They specifically talk about using the s-curve to establish parity across the brackets.
No sense in arguing this over and over. Who cares. No one knows. As Syb said, they said geography was the key in placing teams on a seed line - but the Big-12 got really hurt in that.
My only take away is that the Big-12's representative on the committee did the conference no favors. We are the only major conference with only 1 top 16, neither of our 5 seeds get to play anywhere even sort of close enough to get fans to, Duke was GIVEN a major gift for a weak season with way more bad losses (than us) and no good wins - not a single one. The ACC's representative is much more supportive of her conference than the Big-12's. Even if they supposedly don't sit in on the discussions about conference teams, you can tell how respected they are by the seedings. It also is likely that she represents Texas schools more than others. Texas finished 3 games behind us, played a weaker schedule, had to have a local official foul out 6 of our players to beat us - at home - in 2OT, and still got the same seed (5). Maybe she traded that Texas 5 seed by offering to send us out to Stanford. We will never know.
But none of it matters. We got the hardest 5 seed spot - since Stanford actually beat (in the conference tour.) both Pac-12 teams they played that were seeded higher than them. And obviously Stanford has been far more successful in Tournament play than about anyone around except Notre Dame, UCONN, & Tenn. To play on their court is a huge challenge. They even beat UCONN there if I recall correctly.
But had we been a 4 seed we would have played a 5. Only advantage would be on our court instead of as a visiting team.
Lots of our posters claimed all the road games prepared us for this. This is your test on that claim. I say we should have beaten Kansas and none of this would be under discussion. Although someone else lost to Kansas .... now who was that? Did it hurt them?
