... I forget which ranking system it is, but there's one that's notably lower on the MWC than others, and it's the only system that factors in elevation. The long and short of it is that it's harder for most teams to win at elevation, so teams at elevation have a distinct home court advantage-- and it's also less hard for elevation teams to win at other elevation locations.

So when you look at the MWC-- or even at a team like BYU-- their resumes and predictive metrics all line up to say "hey, these teams should obviously be in," but they underperform expectation in the tournament-- and I'd imagine the fact that they don't carry the same type of geographical advantage in the dance plays a sizable role there.

So if there was a way for the NET to adjust to factor in geography... that'd likely skew the MWC down a peg or two.

Every metric had them as the seventh best conference, and they only ended up with six teams due to a combination of lucky road performance, a few key OOC wins, and the bad teams in the conference never blowing up the top 6's resumes... but I do think it'd behoove them to consider that the OOC wins and outsized road performance might be boosted by factors that aren't connected to the teams themselves.