Thanks BLD, great explanation.
This was maddening to me early on when my son started playing D3 ball on a very competitive national team. We would get stuck in a Regional with 3-4 top ten nationally ranked teams and they were arguably the second best team in the country a couple of years ago and were left at home because they ran into the best team in the country in their Regional. You just never saw this in D1 ball where they would seed Regionals nationally, which they do not do in D3 ball.
In the end, for me it is all about "fit" and finding the best place to play and have a good academic/athletic balance, which of course both our sons found, which is hard to do. I will add that conference tournament and Regionals/CWS games are so different from regular season games it is really special to be on a team that consistently in these types of games. If really is more fun playing for a winning program than a loosing one, which is something to think about for players looking at divisions and teams.
Great post!