The disaster that is South Carolina

I think this may need an explanation.

I think everyone can agree, give or take a Wichita State, that South Carolina got the most flagrant seed from the selection committee.  I had them on the 11 line.  Bracket Matrix on the 9 line.  Very few gave them a 7 seed.  They were the most mis-seeded team in the tournament, period.

So don't get trapped by their run!  Their Final Four run does NOT mean that their 7 seed was justified.  Don't fall for that trap.

The real disaster of the situation is, though, that the committee has been rewarded for their bad seed.  They gave a middling power conference team a much higher seed than they deserved, and they got validated.  This just means that in the future, the committee is much more likely to give more middling power conference teams better seeds, instead of mid-majors.

Notice what happened to Middle Tennessee.  Selection committee said they probably would've been an at-large team if they needed it...but got seeded as a 12, below all at-large teams.  Clearly there's a disconnect between selection and seeding that needs to be bridged.  But if all these teams seeded 7th, 8th, and 9th keep winning multiple games or coming close (see S Carolina > Duke, Wisky > Nova, and the Arkansas/UNC close call, for example), there's going to be no motivation for the selection committee to move mid-majors up into those seeds.

So this is what I'm worried about.  The selection committee is going to use South Carolina as validation to keep over-seeding major conference teams and to bury mid-majors.