None of the other Southern Conference men's basketball coaches have so much as extended a Kleenex to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga's John Shulman. Why should they? He's got the ring from last year.

But UTC lost five senior starters, 92 percent of its scoring and only player with a single start from a Southern Conference championship team.

The coaches didn't show the Mocs much respect by picking them to finish fourth in the North Division with no appointments to the preseason all-conference team.

"I would have picked us sixth, and nobody on our team has proven anything," Shulman said before Saturday's exhibition win over Tennessee Wesleyan. "I believe that's where we need to be picked.

"But I'd be very disappointed if that's where we did finish."

March is still four months away -- two months of recovery and experience and two months of SoCon competition.

"We are not a sixth-place team," sophomore Ricky Taylor said. "Sixth place, I don't know about that."

They could look that lowly in November and December -- not because they'll face one of the toughest nonconference schedules in the nation like they did a year ago, but because four potential starters will be in street clothes until at least Dec. 1. Senior Ty Patterson is suspended. Chris Early, Dante Harvey and Troy Cage are out with injuries.

Shulman's target date for having his whole team back, healthy and somewhat familiar with each other is the Jan. 6 date at Georgia Southern that will begin the most important part of the Mocs' season -- conference play.

"I have to remember to be patient," Shulman said. "But we'll get guys back, we'll be together and have two months to see if we can uphold Chattanooga tradition."

November will be played with eight scholarship players. December will be spent mixing the others back into the rotation and defining each player's role within the team.

"I'm not expecting any of our guys back until Dec. 1, and then you have to evolve again," Shulman said. "Whether we're good or bad, we're going to look a lot different in November than we will in December. Then we're going to look a lot different in January."

The starting lineup already has been altered from what Shulman thought it might look like when school began in August. The four players now out could have taken three spots.

The possibility for freshman Josh Odem to take a redshirt existed, but now he'll play a lot in November. And junior college transfer post players Ridge McKeither and DeAntre Jefferson have picked up the system faster than expected.

"It's going to change and that's going to keep guys on their toes, but it might not," sophomore Keegan Bell said. "The first part of the season is about learning. Then as it goes on and gets more serious, we want to be playing our best when conference comes around.

That's in January. We're still in November, early November.

"We have no identity," Harvey said. "We don't know who we are. But by Christmas break and in the second half of the season, we should be fully loaded, and nobody in the conference should be able to beat us."