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First, the geography.
Alabama of the Southeastern Conference faces Wisconsin-Milwaukee of the Horizon League at 12:25 p.m. Thursday in the first of four first-round games in the 13,000-seat arena.
About 30 minutes after will follow Boston College of the Big East taking on Pennsylvania of the Ivy League.
The evening session Thursday tips off at 7:10 p.m. with Wake Forest of the Atlantic Coast Conference taking on University of Tennessee at Chattanooga of the Southern League.
West Virginia of the Big East Conference faces Creighton from the Missouri Valley Conference in Thursday's final first-round contest, scheduled to begin 30 minutes after the previous game.
It shapes up as a long day for eight teams from seven conferences.
Although the NCAA tries to consider geographic proximity when deciding where teams will be sent for first-round and second-round games, selection committee Chairman Bob Bowlsby acknowledged Sunday some teams inevitably must make long road trips to participate in college basketball's so-called "Big Dance."
"We try to keep the No. 1 seeds close to their home area, but otherwise, we're forced to do the best we can to balance brackets," said Bowlsby, Iowa's director of athletics.
There are no No. 1 seeds at CSU. Wake Forest is a No. 2 seed.
When it comes to the teams sent to Cleveland, the committee's decision-making process was kindest to Wisconsin-Milwaukee and West Virginia.
UWM is the same conference as Cleveland State and plays one game every season at the Wolstein Center. They were there on Feb. 26 and beat CSU handily, 81-59.
The Mountaineers will be able to bus to CSU and have a strong Cleveland-area connection in junior guard Mike Gansey. The 6-foot-4 guard, averaging 11.5 points and 5.4 rebounds, was runner-up for Ohio's Mr. Basketball Award in 2000 as a senior at Olmsted Falls High School.
Gansey is quite familiar with the Wolstein Center, too. He played against CSU there four years ago when he was a freshman at St. Bonaventure. He subsequently transferred to West Virginia. Last summer, he was regular in pick-up games at CSU along with his younger brother, Steve Gansey, a freshman guard at CSU.
The politics of college basketball and the NCAA tournament is manifested in the lack of a team from the Mid-American Conference getting an at-large bid to the tournament.
There was speculation Sunday that the University of Buffalo, the runner-up in last week's MAC tournament at Gund Arena, would get an at-large bid and possibly be placed in Cleveland.
When the smoke cleared after Sunday's nationally televised selection show on WOIO, the only MAC team in the NCAA tournament was Ohio University, winner of the conference tournament and the automatic bid that goes with it.
Clark Kellogg, the former St. Joseph High School and Ohio State standout who now is the lead college basketball studio analyst for CBS Sports, feels the MAC's pain at only getting one team in the field again this year.
"I think what hurt the MAC is that it was so balanced this season, it was difficult for the committee to differentiate the teams," Kellogg said.
