NCAA Regional Sites Announced, What Does It Mean For Mississippi State

As expected, the Mississippi State Bulldogs were not among the 16 announced regional hosts for the 2014 NCAA Tournament.  While national seeds will not be announced until Monday morning, the NCAA already announced the host sites:

1. Baton Rouge--LSU
2. Bloomington--Indiana
3. Charlottesville--Virginia
4. Coral Gables--Miami
5. Corvallis--Oregon State
6. Columbia--South Carolina
7. Fort Worth--TCU
8. Gainesville--Florida
9. Houston--Rice
10. Lafayette--Louisiana
11. Louisville--Louisville
12. Nashville--Vanderbilt
13. Oxford--Ole Miss
14. San Luis Obispo--Cal Poly
15. Stillwater--Oklahoma State
16. Tallahassee--Florida State

Trying to figure out the site that the Bulldogs will call home next weekend is interesting.  Five sites, SEC hosts, will not play home to the Bulldogs: LSU, South Carolina, Florida, Vanderbilt, and Ole Miss.  With five more SEC schools having the potential to make the tournament, they will be scattered amongst the other eleven sites.

Should geography play an important factor, as it should if the Bulldogs earn a two seed, Rice (Houston), Louisiana (Lafayette), and Florida State (Tallahassee) all make for possible landing spots for Mississippi State.  In what might not be welcome news for the Bulldogs, two of those three teams, Louisiana and Florida State could be national seeds.