If you're looking for someone to blame, blame Pitt, Louisville, Georgetown and Notre Dame.
MU actually finished as a 7 seed on the S-Curve (the highest 7 seed actually) but the committee had no choice but to make MU an 8 seed because of it's conference affiliation with Pitt, Louisville, G-Town and ND. All of those schools finished above us on the curve, and the problem lied in that they finished (with the exception of G-Town) as 3-6 seeds on the curve. If you're conference has less than 8 teams make the tournament, the committee will bump/increase your seed based on conference affiliations to avoid you meeting someone from your conference until the regional finals.
I know it doesn't seem fair, but this happens every year unfortunately.
interesting.
i still think the unbalanced schedule hurt MU. Imagine if this team was 26-7 (12-4)with road wins at Cincy and SJU, rather than losses to ND and GU (as an example). I dont understand how ND could have been higher on anybody's grid than MU. The Irish played the 303rd toughest out of conference slate, won 2 Big East roadies (Cincy, RU), and played 10 teams with an RPI north of 200, and played the 13th toughest intraconference Big East schedule.
MU played the 2nd toughest Big East sched, had more road/neutral wins, fewer bad losses (2 to 1), played fewer patsies, had more conference road wins, had RPI top 25 road/neutral wins........hose job
pardon my ignorance, but waht is the "S-Curve?"
it is discussed here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_Sunday
this analysis is also interesting
http://www.unf.edu/~jcoleman/dance.htm