Welcome to championship season! With high scores flying across the country to end the regular season, teams were doing their best to tidy up their report cards before the pre-postseason check-in. While grades are up overall, the SEC is starting to slump as a few early championship contenders are trending in the wrong direction with stakes only amping up from here.
Just as regular-season scores, standings, wins, and losses don’t matter in the postseason, regular-season grades don’t either. This week, only the current grades are shown for each team—accompanied by a postseason outlook—to get a true sense of what direction they’re headed.
In 2023, the NCAA Report Card will measure which teams look like championship teams right now, meaning grades will not be cumulative. Rather, they’ll reflect averages over the most recent two weeks of competition—because what matters most in the postseason anyways is who’s hot at the right time. With the average NCAA champions’ score from the last five years now totaling 198.250, the standards for grades are rising, too. An event total of 49.600 or better is now required for an A+, 49.550 or better for an A, 49.500 for an A-, and the pattern continuing in five-hundredths of a point decreases per plus/minus.
The biggest…
