re: Question about Pre-1939 Basketball National Champions

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Helms is an oddity. It's a retroactive award that very few schools actually count. For instance, Kentucky does not count theirs. On the other hand, second rate programs such as UNC will hang banners for them (perhaps to offset the impending reduction in NCAA titles). I wouldn't trust a Helms trophy.

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Nothing wrong with it, really. Might as well acknowledge an award if someone thinks highly enough of you to give you one--especially in the years before the NCAA finally got its act together in 1939 and began sponsoring a championship tournament of its own for its member schools. However, in the ten season that postseason playoff games were played pre-1939, I do think that these non-NCAA playoff games should carry weight over the Helms selections since they settled the winners with head-to-head match-ups on the hardwood.

On the same token, keep in mind that for college football, the Bowl Alliance, BCS, and College Football Playoffs are still not to this day officially sponsored by the NCAA itself, but pretty much everyone still recognizes the winners of those games as legit champs since they played it out on the field.