As I understand the selection process it works like this.
Meets starting the last weekend of Sept and afterward count.
At the regional meets 2 teams from each region qualify automatically.
The third team is the "Bubble" team.
So only nine teams are considered One exception to be noted later.
the selection committee looks at those nine teams. The first criteria after regional placing is number of teams already in the meet that each bubble team has beaten. These are referred to as points or scalps. The team with the most points moves into the meet. the team that was 4th in that region moves onto the bubble from that region. Once a team is selected and is in the meet teams that beat them also get points for beating them. So the first team that is selected only has 18 teams that they could get points from but the last team has 30 teams that could give them points.
The rule change this year is called a one time blocker rule that allows regions to use the sub-bubble team to push the bubble team into the meet both teams move into the meet. It can only be used once per region.
Teams are allowed to designate a team as a B team and therefore this team cannot earn points nor can it give points by being beaten. This has been irrelevant ntil this week because non of the prior meets counted for points.
The teams that realistically could qualify for nationals need to schedule so they meet as many of the other good teams as possible. Last year Griak had 17 teams that qualified for nationals. This means that a team that placed 16th actually earned 1 point at Griak.