I agree also

Marquette getting a 6 seed was huge for us. If they had been unseeded, I'm convinced that we would have drawn them in the first round for geographic reasons.

As I said above, if I were to seed all of the teams in this year's field, I would seed Marquette lower than 6 but higher than 14 (their de facto seed if they were our first-round opponent). Thus, Marquette would have been a tougher first-round matchup than we had reason to expect, but an easier second-round opponent than we had reason to expect. The Selection Committee did us a favor by making Marquette a seeded team. And I suppose they wanted Marquette in the Columbus QF bracket, although they could have made Marquette a 7 seed rather than a 6. Perhaps they wanted the possibility of two Midwest schools (ND and Marquette) matching up in Columbus.

I too would rather have seen Denver on the opposite side of the bracket. But I think, in hindsight, that the combination of Brown's loss to Harvard, Denver's loss to Marquette and Maryland winning the B1G championship, sealed our fate in that regard. In any event, until proven otherwise we have to get past Denver at some point to win the championship.