Being a even-numbered year with men having hosting priority the first weekend, Amherst was going to be the host as the highest seed in their pod (and their quadrant overall). Whether St. Lawrence bid to host or not wouldn't have mattered.
Whether St. Lawrence bid to host or not, in theory, should not have impacted where the Saints were placed in the brackets as the bracketing should be completed before they start looking at hosting assignments. I'm not sure I can completely 100% believe that potential hosting options aren't in the back of their minds when forming the brackets, especially out west, but I can imagine it's minimal. So I wonder if the committee determines who are their top 16 seeds (based on the selection/ranking criteria) and, to the extent that geography cooperates, gives them each their own 1st/2nd Round pod. Looking at this year's brackets and the first/top teams in each pod bracket which corresponds to the highest seed in that pod, and comparing those teams to the final Regional Rankings and data, it seems very plausible that those are the committee's top 16 seeds. St. Thomas was the highest seed in their pod but did not host--could be because they did not bid to host or because of something the committee found unsatisfactory about their field/facility/hosting capabilities. And of all the pod top seeds, St. Thomas would also be the most questionable to have been among the top 16 seeds nationally. Babson or St. Lawrence might have been the 16th seed nationally, but geography meant someone out west needed to host a pod of west teams (there were five Region X teams in the field, and they weren't going to fly them all to separate pods).
So who knows, St. Lawrence may have been the 16th seed and if not for the west being without a top 16 seed, might have had their own pod (and avoided Amherst) even if they couldn't host due to not having put in a bid. Now that's just a mental exercise and speculation on my part, and to be honest I'd guess Babson would have been ahead of St. Lawrence in the seeding and more likely to have been the 16th seed if St. Thomas was not among the top 16. Either way, St. Lawrence likely was very close to having their own pod, but when they didn't get that, geography/travel and trying to keep conference rivals separated as long as possible (I don't think any pod has two teams from the same conference) resulting in the Saints being handed a tougher 2nd round opponent than their seeding would have otherwise earned them.
Regardless of teams' seeding or WLT records, to have had the best shot of advancing to the Sweet 16, Messiah would have probably been better off with any of nearly 80% of the teams in the tournament over Williams. But that's who they got. Not all paths to the Final Four are equal, and sometimes you get a favorable path, other times not. Champions have to win and overcome whatever they're faced with, and this year the Falcons didn't do that.
