Each player has a rating of points produced per 100 possessions (offensive and defensive) where 106 is average. It is a combo of...
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Dean Oliver's offensive rating w/ a usage adjustment
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Dean Oliver's defensive rating
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My value added per minute over expectation calculation
A projected rating is calculated from the player's prior ratings (which includes freshman and junior college transfer projections where applicable). Each player also has a position. Given all the players' projected ratings and positions, a minutes projection can be given for each. A team rating is then calculated by weighting all the players' ratings based on their minutes. This team rating is then - quite simply, actually, as is the beauty of Oliver's equations - converted into a point spread per 100 possessions by subtracting 100. That is, if two teams play on a neutral floor, you can proxy the point spread by taking the difference between the two teams' ratings (and adjusting for pace).
Incoming freshmen are all recruited by college programs who do their own scouting. The intricacies of such may not be public domain, but whom a college recruits tells a lot about what a program thinks of said recruit. From this, I can create a star rating for each recruit. Their star rating is a mix of...
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Quality of colleges who offer
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Quantity of colleges who offer
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Quality of college committed to
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Star Rating from media recruiting services (more important for top recruits)
The star rating is then turned into a player rating - the same one utilized by my team ratings. The largest benefit is that there aren't a thousand players with the same two-star rating, but it also identifies lower rated players who are recruited by many high-major programs as legitimate players.