Before the NCAA men's basketball tournament pairings were announced, Dave Leitao would not have been surprised to see Virginia involved in a game between Nos. 8 and 9 seeds.

"That's interesting," UVa athletic director Craig Littlepage said Tuesday. "Dave and I haven't talked about it. That's the first time I'd heard that."

Littlepage is in his final season as a member of the NCAA selection committee, a group for which he served as chairman in 2006. He doesn't know what went into Virginia's selection as a No. 4 seed in the South Region because he was required to leave the room when talk turned to the Cavaliers.

"I thought maybe we'd be a [No.] 5," he said.

To be seeded among the top five teams in any region, theoretically Virginia (20-10) would have qualified as one of the top 20 teams in the country. However, there were no polls or power ratings this week that had the Cavaliers in the top 25.

Littlepage had been sequestered in another room for 20 minutes when there was a knock on the door and he was invited to rejoin the committee.

"When I looked at the computer and saw that we were on the No. 4 line, I must say it raised my eyebrows," Littlepage said. "I was thinking that maybe someone was trying to pull one over on me and just get a rise out of me.

"I didn't say anything but I think there was a realization that I looked surprised. I can't imagine my exact reaction. Maybe I blinked my eyes."

If it was a parting gift, it was a nice one, but Littlepage has been involved with the committee long enough to know it doesn't act that way.

"I don't know definitively because I did not speak to any members of the committee about this," Littlepage said. "You wouldn't want to do anything to breach the committee's policy and practices, but it appears consideration was given to the fact that we were the co-regular season champion in the No. 1-rated conference in the country."

Littlepage is thinking that Virginia may have benefitted from North Carolina's ACC Tournament championship, which cemented the Tar Heels' standing as the No. 1 seed in the East.

Since the Cavaliers tied Carolina for the regular-season championship, Littlepage said, it would have been difficult for the committee to place them five, six or seven lines behind the Tar Heels on the seeding scale.

"There was going to be some bunching in some leagues and you knew that Virginia, Virginia Tech and Maryland were not going to be separated by too much," Littlepage said. "What we usually do is look at head-to-head competition."

Virginia was 3-1 against Tech and Maryland, including 2-0 against the Terps, who also were a No. 4 seed. The Hokies were 2-1 against UVa and Maryland but got a No. 5 seed.

On the other hand, the Cavaliers lagged behind many of their ACC colleagues in the various power ratings and did not move past NIT-bound Clemson and Florida State until the final week of the regular season.

Virginia had non-conference victories over Gonzaga and Arizona, and the Cavaliers also played Purdue and Stanford, "but for some reason, it didn't move the needle very much," Littlepage said.

"There are things the committee considers that the RPI does not reflect."

In 2006, it was Littlepage who was grilled by CBS analyst Billy Packer, a responsibility that he was more than willing to relinquish.

"I felt on Sunday night that, 'Boy, it would be difficult to do this again,' " said Littlepage, whose five-year term expires in September. "I say that more about the selection process than the committee membership overall. This past selection weekend was particularly grueling."

When the selections were completed and the interviews done, the committee sat back and speculated on matchups that would prompt conspiracy accusations. Among them is UCLA's first-round game with Weber State, the alma mater of Bruins' coach Ben Howland. That could set up a possible second-round game with Pittsburgh, where Howland coached before going to UCLA.

"That falls under the heading of, 'You couldn't have made it up,' " Littlepage said.

As a seventh seed, Indiana could have played 10th-seeded Texas Tech and former Hoosiers coach Bobby Knight in the first round, but those teams were sent to different regions.

"That could be a discussion," Littlepage said. "We wouldn't hype to impact the event."