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Meeting your seed means meeting expectations. If the ranking systems have low expectations of your team, then you are likely to beat those expectations. Another way of looking at it: If you sandbag all year long, and then wrestle the tourney like it means something, you will be more likely to beat your seed. IMO, Brands and Sanderson both did good jobs of peaking their teams for Nationals this year.
I'm not sure who would sandbag an entire season in order to get a lower seed. I'll take the higher seed if that's an option, thank you very much! I agree that effectively happens often enough because of injury/illness and very occasionally a Quentin Wright type of year. In a vacuum, staying healthy and motivated for three days should be easier than for the 100+ days leading up to it.
Looking at it from the seeding committee perspective, I think anyone who finishes within one (higher or lower) was accurately seeded therefore counting as a win for them. I'd love to see the "win percentage" for the seeding committee. Has anyone already looked at that?