Sports Illustrated’s College Basketball Projection System is a collaboration between the economist Dan Hanner and SI’s Luke Winn (with assistance in 2016 from SI’s Jeremy Fuchs) that generates our player forecasts and 1–351 preseason rankings by simulating the season 10,000 times. As our preview coverage kicks off, we wanted to offer a closer look at three aspects of the projection model:
• Which types of players, according to its historical data, are most likely to be efficient starters
• How the model ranks teams 1–351
• Why we think the model has produced the nation’s most accurate preseason projections for each of its two years of existence
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