Rewards standings before the tournament games and after them.

Commentary: Ten of the top fifteen teams in the polls were ranked into roughly the same positions by Rewards after the conference tournaments finished. Kansas moved up two places from the previous Rewards ranking (#9) with its win over Texas, but its weaker out of conference schedule left it out of the top five, where the voters thought they should be ranked. Davidson at #35, was also somewhat undervalued (#23 in both polls) by Rewards as was #21 Washington State (#27 by Rewards) since neither of them had any wins over extremely strong opponents.

Kansas, by virtue of the top quality wins over UNC and Memphis (and their other four opponents in the NCAA tournament), moved up into the #2 position (behind Memphis), but the extra loss, especially  the "bad loss" to Oklahoma State (17-16) kept them slightly behind the Tigers, who only loss to Tennessee (Rewards #5, #7 in the Coaches poll) and Kansas. Davidson moved up to #13 (#9 in the Coaches poll) by virtue of their making the Elite Eight after defeating Gonzaga (#26 in Rewards, #31 in the poll), Georgetown (#9 in Rewards, #12 in that final poll) and Wisconsin (#6 in Rewards, #10 in the post tournament poll), and Western Kentucky's two NCAA tournament wins (one over Drake - #11 in Rewards, #23 in the Coaches poll) moved them up from #37 to #29 in the final Rewards standings. NIT champion Ohio State moved up from #62 to #50 in Rewards, just ahead of NIT runner-up UMass (#51), and OSU finished tied for 35th in the Coaches poll.