The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women's basketball team is a veteran one, with four starters returning from a 24-win season.
It's not just the four starters, it's a group with four seniors and five juniors, all of whom have contributed in some way, shape or form over their careers.
A veteran team has to have bigger goals, and UTC coach Jim Foster is preparing his Mocs for just that.
Ansley Chilton, Aryanna Gilbert, Moses Johnson, Jasmine Joyner and Chelsey Shumpert have been with Foster for the duration of their college careers and have 82 wins and three Southern Conference championships. Johnson and Joyner are seniors, while injuries have caused Chilton, Gilbert and Shumpert to redshirt. In addition, the team has added seniors Queen Alford and Sydney Vanlandingham to the program, so the level of experience is high for the Mocs entering this season.
"We wouldn't be doing what we're doing if we didn't (have experience), but to me it's the next logical progression for this group," Foster said recently. "We've met the challenge of the league; we've been in the NCAA tournament, but we want to win in the NCAA tournament, and in order to do that we have to play what I call 'people that look like you.' We've got a lot of people that look like us on the schedule, and we need to take care of business, then take care of our league business and get in the NCAA tournament first, then when we get in it we'll have a frame of reference for what they look like because we've played them a number of times, not just occasionally.
"Hopefully by then you're better prepared to have the kind of success we want to have."
By the time the Mocs enter SoCon play, they will have faced six NCAA tournament teams, including four-time defending national champion Connecticut. Also on the schedule are Florida Gulf Coast and Wisconsin-Green Bay, the top two mid-major programs in the country last season.
In this season's mid-major preseason poll, Green Bay is second, two spots ahead of UTC. Florida Gulf Coast is seventh while SoCon foe Mercer is 23rd.
The Mocs haven't won in an NCAA tournament since 2005, but with a number of possible leaders on the roster there is enough leadership for that streak to end this year.
"The thing about this team is that it's a veteran team, so it's not only up to me to be a leader," Joyner said. "Everyone else has to be leaders. Sometimes I'll have to step in; I can't be as chill back as I was last year because I have to remember it is my last year, so I've got to step up and say more, but we have other leaders on the court, which makes it a good thing to be a veteran team."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenleytfp.