Commentary: Rewards agreed with both polls, concerning who the top two teams were before the NCAA and NIT tournaments began. Purdue fell in the polls after two late, regular season losses (when Robbie Hummel went down with a torn ACL), but Rewards thought their overall season should be about 6 places higher. Temple was also ranked about 6 places higher than their position in the polls, but that was probably because of the voters perceptions about the perceived strength of the Owls' conference (Atlantic 10). Ohio State, which finished strong after Evan Turner returned to the lineup, ended up winning the Big 10 post season conference tournament, and thereby solidified themselves as a #5 or 6 team according to the pollsters, but with 7 losses, Rewards had them in a tightly packed group (at #17).
Duke moved up from #8 to #3, according to the Rewards system, after winning the NCAA tournament, and runner up Butler was elevated from #10 to #5. Cornell, a #12 seed, reached the sweet sixteen, and they were "rewarded" by being promoted from #27 to #11 (ending up #17 in the final Coaches' poll), while Dayton, the NIT champion received a few votes, and finished as the #33 team in that poll, and Rewards improved their ranking from #69 to #55. Many other sweet sixteen teams' final Rewards rankings matched fairly closely to their final Coaches' poll position: Northern Iowa (#10 vs. #13), Villanova (#12 vs. #15), St. Mary's (#14 vs. #19), Ohio State (#15 vs. #11), and Xavier (#24 vs. #14).
(This page last modified April 07, 2010 .)