"The committee will make a determination of that when the situation comes up and the site would be announced Tuesday morning," NCAA Media representative Jeff Williams said in a statement. "Since there is no true seeding of #2s, it would largely just be looking at the merits of the two bids (venue, hotels, guarantees, etc.) but it would be a full committee decision."
Lindsey Nelson Stadium has a base capacity of 4,387 while Southern Miss' Pete Taylor Field seats 3,265fans.
Both Knoxville and Hattiesburg are plenty big enough to have no shortage of hotels so the host could come down to who has the better resume.
Tennessee is 41-19 (16-14 SEC) and entered the NCAA Tournament ranked No. 20 in RPI. Southern Miss is 45-18 (22-8 Sun Belt) and entered the NCAA Tournament ranked No. 21 in RPI. After the opening weekend of the tournament the Vols are No. 12 in RPI and Southern Miss is No. 18.
Why does RPI matter so much? NCAA Tournament selection committee uses RPI more than any other metric and 15 of the 16 regional host teams were in the top 16 of RPI. Many of the final teams in the field landed in the tournament over those that didn't due to RPI.
While Southern Miss has more wins than Tennessee, they did it against a much weaker schedule. The Golden Eagles played just three SEC teams and six games against power five opponents. Southern Miss went 0-3 against the SEC and 1-5 against power five opponents in the regular season.
The Golden Eagles did go 3-0 against NCAA Tournament participant Dallas Baptist. Even so, Tennessee's strength of schedule (19) is 25 spots higher than Southern Miss (44).
Tennessee's three-game sweep of the Clemson Regional (No. 4 overall seed) was more impressive than Southern Miss' Auburn Regional win.
It will be interesting if we will ever see why the committee voted Hattiesburg over Knoxville with these stats
