Was the tower on the cap at that position connected to plug #1?
Apparantly it doesnt matter where the rotor ends up pointing as long as when you are TDC on #1 the rotor points to the tower conencted to #1.
I had the same issue when I swapped out my distributor....pointed to a different spot than the original...I just moved the wires around accordingly.....
My drivegear pointed to the front left corner of the block but the rotor pointed towards the center front as I recall....I guess its how the upper shaft is indexed to the lower shaft in the distributor.