Rewards standings before the tournament games and after them.

Commentary: Rewards matched the top 15 in the polls very closely, as indicated by the average difference in the rankings being less than two places per team, with seven teams appearing in the same, or almost the same, position in both rankings. Kansas appears in the polls as the #16/#14 team, but Rewards had them as #28 since their "best wins" were only over Texas Tech (22-10, #46 in Rewards ranking, #33/#29 in the polls) and Michigan State (18-11, #58 in Rewards, #30/#25 in the polls). Maryland was roughly #20 in the polls, but placed as the #30 team in Rewards for similar reasons while Michigan State, along with Arizona (20-9, #47 in Rewards, #22/#18 in the polls, were both placed quite a few places lower in these rankings, generating a much higher average in the table above for how far apart teams in the top 20 (and top 25) were this year. Arizona did defeat Texas (23-7, #13 in Rewards, #12/#11 in the polls), but their next best win was only over St. Louis (18-12, #71 as ranked by Rewards), while MSU did defeat DePaul (21-9, #33 in Rewards, #29/#27 in polls) and Michigan (18-11, #63 as ranked by Rewards), but these were not sufficient to significantly offset their eleven losses.

Connecticut won the NCAA tournament, and moved up from #9 to #5 in the final ranking produced by the Rewards system. They lost half of their six games when they were without the services of their All-American center (Emeka Okafor), and those three fewer losses might have placed them as the #1 team in the final Rewards ranking. NIT champion Michigan moved up from #63 to #51, as determined by Rewards (finishing as the 32nd best team in the final coaches poll), and most other teams stayed close to their pre-tourney positions except for Manhattan, which moved from #38 to #28 in Rewards (likewise moving up from 42nd to tied for 36th in the coaches poll) as well as Nevada, which moved up from #43 to #32 in the Rewards rankings, and from 40th in the Coaches poll - pre-tourney ranking of 33rd in the AP - to 21st in the final Coaches pool.