I usually agree with you but I am less worried on this score than you seem to be.
What an experienced team usually means is that you are more likely to win the close ones, and less likely to have fluke losses.
Half of our losses last season were by 7 points or less. I fully expect we'd win most of those this season. We'll have some close games, but we'll win most of them. We also had a couple end-of-game letdowns that I wouldn't expect to see from a more experienced team.
As for fluke losses, the only game I'd put in that category last season is the Pitt loss. Yes, the Butler loss and maybe the Iowa loss could be counted as fluke losses but those were actually quite good teams that maybe we didn't take seriously enough. I expect this year's team to have learned that lesson.
My main concern this season (with the usual caveats about injuries and such) is that we might get too cocky. We will start the season much better than most teams in the nation. But because we are this experienced team that isn't adding any super-talented freshmen, we have less room for improvement than some of the teams we will face down he stretch. For example, I expect us to slap down UMd in December. But if Turgeon fully integrates all his talent, that could go either way by March.
Ditto with Duke. We would kill them in January or early February, I'm sure. But now that we wait until late Feb before our first meeting, that gives their excellent frosh that much more time to turn the corner. I hate the new schedule that has us playing Duke for the first time as our 13th conference game. We play 18 conference games. Duke should be the 9th and 18th ACC games. That would have us playing Duke on Feb 1 this year. But instead we play them on Feb 17.
