They knew Hurricane Florence for one thing. They spent a good portion of the semester on the road, which is a story in itself. Not like UVA, who knew no such road-trips. Including pre-season had 13 games at home this year and none as "true" away games in the regular season OOC. None! UNCW also had 2 wins against Top 25 teams. Doesn't seem like too much of an ask to be fair.
I'm not sure that Syracuse have it so bad. Their RPI is 19, yet they got a seed, which means they a) don't have to play the first round and b) they host the second round. I'd say unseeded Akron would have a better complaint with an RPI of 14 and no seed.
Think it's a pretty clear-cut case of head-to-head trumping RPI. Securing the last bye by default means Syracuse is one of the "winners" of the bracket just by default. But there were quite a few teams that could've slotted into their mid-week match, and Akron is probably the best of the teams they could've played. (If geography was the primary concern, why not put URI-UConn or Colgate-UNH there?)