Rewards standings before the tournament games and after them.

Commentary: Rewards agreed with who the top two teams should be, according to both polls, but ranked UCLA as #4 partially due to the fact that they were the only team to defeat #1 San Francisco: the AP ranked the Bruins #13 and the UPI had them as the #12 team, even though they did finish 21-5. Oregon State defeated UCLA in a conference playoff for the automatic NCAA tourney bid, but at 21-7, Rewards only had ranked them as #20, while AP listed them as the #10 team, and the UPI as the #8 team (probably because of that end of season performance). In fact, except for these two Pacific Coast Conference teams, the top ten in both polls landed pretty much in Rewards top 10 as well, albeit in a slightly different order (from #3 - #10). Three of the teams in the Final Four ranked as #1, #3, and #5 in both polls, and Colorado was one of the highest teams (#15/#11) in their side of the bracket, so the cream of the crop did rise to that showcase this year. (#2 Kentucky was upset by Marquette - #8/#9 - who lost to #5 Iowa in the regional final). NIT champion Duquesne, who Rewards had as the #7 team, which also agreed with the polls - AP had them as #6, but #7 in the UPI - moved up to #3 in the final Rewards ranking after winning that tournament.