Rewards standings before the tournament games and after them.

Commentary: The final AP poll was taken on March 4th (1952) and after that date, Kansas defeated Kansas State, and UCLA took 2 out of 3 from Washington (in a playoff/play-in series for the automatic NCAA Pacific Coast Conference bid) so that helps to explain (somewhat) why there is the large discrepancy between how the AP pollsters viewed KSU and the Huskies, and why Rewards ranked them further down the list. (It is not clear when the last UPI poll was taken.) Rewards did agree with both the AP and UPI polls that Kentucky and Illinois were the #1 and #2 teams before the tournaments began, and Rewards had Duquesne as the #4 team (#5 in both polls). After that, Rewards differed on team placement by more than 4 positions on ten of the top twenty teams.

Kansas moved up to #1 according to the Rewards system, after they won the NCAA tournament, from the position as #8 beforehand (which is also where the AP pollsters ranked them), and Final Four finalist Illinois (who defeated the surprising Santa Clara team in the consolation game) slipped to #3, and Kentucky, who lost to NCAA runner-up St. John's, fell to #4. St. John's moved up to #5 (from #6; their early NIT loss probably kept them from moving ahead of Kentucky) and the 15-10 Santa Clara team moved up from #94 to #80 by winning their first two games in the NCAA tourney. NIT champion LaSalle moved up from #24 to #10 in the final Rewards ranking.