what goes into Top 25 and projection report

I ASSUME a teams RPI and ratings of the players

Rankings has to do a lot with Wins, RPI, and SOS

Projection report has more to do more with record vs top 25, 50 and 100 RPI teams.

All the tournament selection criteria go into the projection report.

Top 25 is not part of the selection criteria, and doesn't take as many factors into account.

What is the tourney selection criteria

In a nutshell, the projection report is about beating top 50/top 100 RPI teams, not losing to sub 100 RPI teams, and having a pretty record.

Top 25 is much more weighted towards the pretty record.

as mentioned, top 25 is very heavily record dependent, projection report uses record but is less reliant on it. ranking takes RPI into account a little too. NT seeding takes rpi into account more. NT seeding relies heavily on record vs top (25, 50, 75, 100). it also takes into account margin of victory, to some extent.

overall, the project report is a pretty good indicator of a team's quality, while top 25 is garbage. also, just to note, projection report is EXACTLY based on the seeding formula. if you are #1 on the projection report to end the CT, you are guaranteed the #1 overall seed in the NT - same on down the line, except that past #2, things can get shuffled around to avoid conference match-ups. still, the projection report is exactly the "s-curve", as they call it in real life.