So the two-time defending champs just steamrolled through everyone this year en route to a 20-0 season...and the #4 seed in the NCAA tourney.
You can argue in favor of one-loss Cuse and two-losd UNC getting the top two seeds, but somehow a five-loss Virginia team got rated higher than UConn.
The great thing about tourneys, though, is there's always the chance to prove people wrong.
When I saw the seedings last night I was pretty shocked as well, so I went out and looked at the schedules for all four top seeds. Syracuse and UNC can each make a case for their seedings, but, you're right, Virginia's seeding is a joke. UConn and Virginia had 5 opponents in common, Quinnipiac, Boston College, Old Dominion, Princeton and Drexel. Uconn beat Quinnipiac 7-0, Virginia beat them 2-0; UConn beat BC 2-1, Virginia lost 5-4; UConn beat Old Dominion twice, 1-0 and 4-3, Virginia lost 3-2; UConn beat Princeton 4-1 while Virginia beat them 4-3 and both teams beat Drexel 6-0. When you add in the records 20-0 to 14-5 it doesn't even come close to a #2 for Virginia and a #4 for UConn.
Having said that I'm less interested in the absurdity of the seeding and the fact that UConn will use it as motivation, but I am interested in what motivated the tournament committee and that's where it gets interesting. My initial reaction was that they might be trying to impede UConn's attempt at a 3-peat, but realistically if UConn was a #3 they still probably have to go through UNC and Syracuse to win it all, so that's probably not it. So maybe they were trying to ensure two ACC teams in the championship, but I don't think that fits either, since they have 3 of the top 4 seeds. The only answer that seems to really fit is they've gone out of their way to try to enhance UNC's chances of winning.
I'd like to think I'm wrong and the committee seeded teams without bias, but geez the records just don't show Virginia as a #3 and UConn a #4.