When it comes to the opening rounds, it really goes by location. In ways it's actually easier to predict opening round sites than it easy to predict what region UK will go to.
As far as opening round goes, it largely will depend on where the sites are and who is higher on the seed list overall. They will go 1 through 16 (ie the top 4 seeds) and place teams in it's closest geographical location. The thing is once you get to the 4 seed, you're probably playing games out West. Just looking at Lunardi's bracketology (you could take any) the 4 seeds are playing in Spokane, Spokane (again), Denver and Providence. And since the 4 seeds go to those regions, so do the 5s, 12s and 13s. So in terms of opening round games getting a 4 or 5 would not be good.
Even getting a 3 seed might not be good enough to get UK to St. Louis which is their closest opening round site.
Of course this is all dependent on who is ahead of you. You could eventually have a year where there's a ton of West teams high on the seed list and thus they stay West and other sites are opened for the 4 seeds but typically that's not the case. Last year you had Portland, Columbus, Seattle and Jacksonville.
Just another point......the 1s are paired with 16s, 8s and 9s. This helped us in 2014 as we got paired with Wichita St and got the closest region.
So that's opening games. Basically just straight down the seed list. There really isn't any bracketing procedures they have to worry about violating. The host school can't play at the site. That's about it.
But then we get to regionals. All of a sudden, its not about where you are overall on the seed list but where you are ON THAT LINE. So if UK was the overall 1 seed, they would go to Louisville. There's no question about that. If they were the strongest 2 seed, they would go to Louisville. Again no question. But that's just really difficult to judge. I mean the difference between being overall 4th, the weakest 1 and sent out west vs overall 5th, the strongest 2 and being sent to Louisville, we are talking one spot on the overall seed list. So it becomes real tough to judge where teams are going. Another note is the further UK goes down seed wise the more likelihood another SEC is higher and if they are in that region, UK won't be able to go there. So I think UK finishing on the top of the SEC is important too. Louisville is the South Region. Alot of SEC teams that would be their natural region.
So I'm rambling on but to answer your question you really want to be a 3 seed or better to get a favorable location, at least in terms of opening round games. If you fall below the 4th seed you really have zero control tho since it would all depend on who your paired with (ie 5s will go with 4s which means most likely out west, 6s would go with wherever the 3s went etc etc)
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