There are nine regions

The Midwest covers a lot of states, west to North Dakota and south from there to Oklahoma.

In the last few years, the Great Lakes has been a more formidable region than the Midwest and has claimed quite a few at-large berths. This year, the gap between the Great Lakes and Midwest seems much more slender, but the GL overall still seems tougher.

Other than trying to balance the number of universities in regions and with tons of them in Illinois, I’m not sure how Illinois drew the seemingly fortunate outcome of being in the Midwest Region.