2021 FCS Playoff Bracketology D-I March Madness works on a much larger budget (ticket sales, broadcast rights, souvenir sales....) than BCS football. All the games are in neutral arenas. Transporting a basketball team with 12 players and uniforms is cheaper than transporting a football team with its larger roster and equipment. Look at women's basketball which generates less revenue and runs the first couple of rounds at campus sites and you get less travel like UCD to Stanford. Same with lower division basketball...more concern about travel costs, campus sites, more regional games.
I do recall that in the D-II days we had some teams come to Davis from a distance. Lehigh? Bethune-Cookman? Northern Michigan? My memory makes a fool of me more and more these days, but I think they all traveled here for play-off games. As I mentioned in another post, D-II football now breaks the playoffs into four geographical regions, or it did the last time I looked.
Austin Peay traveled to Sac in their lone playoff game in the BCS era...(and gave them a lesson.)