One of the best ways to predict future results is to study historical stats that represent present-day teams. The idea of similarity scores was first created by baseball statistician Bill James, who used the concept of comparing players’ statistics from different generations in order to project Hall of Fame status.
Similarity scores can be how complicated or simple as you wish. For the sake of this study, I used each team’s offensive and defensive efficiencies (OE and DE), as well as four factor statistics (eFG%, TO%, OR%, FTRate) from the past 13 seasons, a total of 5,453 D-I teams.