committee determines locations for each pod only after the 1-16 seeds are placed in the bracket.

If they had even the slightest amount of foresight and intuition they could have realized BYU was one of the next (if not the next) team to be placed and when deciding where to send the 4 seeds they could have put Kansas to Spokane and Alabama OR Auburn to Salt Lake (doesn't matter which one).

But because Kansas was #14 on the seed line they picked their location first and placed them in SLC (over Spokane). Then they threw Alabama and Auburn in the 2 remaining spots in Spokane.

My guess is they didn't consider going back and swapping the regions when BYU came up as the FIRST team to place in the bracket after locations were decided because they felt it was "punishing" Kansas to move them to playing in Spokane instead of slightly closer to home in SLC. But it seems like that would be MUCH less of an impact than moving BYU down a seed line and Gonzaga up a seed line.