Rewards standings before the tournament games and after them.

Commentary: At the end of the regular season, Rewards listed the top two teams in both polls as its #1 and #2 teams as well - just in the opposite order. Undefeated San Francisco certainly deserved to be recognized as the #1 team in the country since they did defeat UCLA (#8/#9 in the polls, though only #18 according to Rewards) and Holy Cross (the voters had them as #14/#15; Rewards placed them as #20) during the regular season. Their final Rewards rating jumped significantly after their wins over SMU (then #7/#6) and #4 Iowa in the Final Four of the NCAA tournament (which SF won). #2 NC State played a much more quantitatively difficult schedule over the entire year, which helps to address why Rewards put them up as #1, but the Wolfpack's opening round loss in the NCAAs (to Canisius), both confirmed the UPI position for the latter team (tied for #18) and validated once again why the strength of schedule component of many different types of objective rating systems is sometimes considered too strongly. NIT Champion Louisville moved up from #7 to #3 in the Rewards system, which agrees fairly well with where they finished in the final polls (#6/#7- before the tournaments were played).