In the preseason we love to speak as though we have a pretty good handle on what's about to happen. We set about ranking teams, players, freshmen, upperclassmen, offenses, defenses, and many other such items in an orderly and highly rigid fashion. Hey, I do my fair share of all of the above myself. (I'm about to do it again right here. Oh, the irony.)
But the key word in that first sentence is, of course, "preseason." We simply don't know what's about to happen, and when it comes to teams that don't have a lot of returning experience, the mystery is even deeper.
Look no further than freshman-laden Kentucky in 2013-14: No. 1 in the preseason poll, out of the top 25 entirely by Selection Sunday, playing for a national title come April. It was a wild ride, the kind that young teams seem particularly adept at providing.
Which programs could pose similar mysteries this season? To measure each team's level of returning experience, I'll use our trusty old friend, possession-minutes. Returning possession-minutes (or RPMs) is a better measure of experience than plain old returning minutes because it's an indication of actual workload on offense that's weighted by playing time.
The teams listed below return the lowest percentages for possession-minutes of any likely Top 25 members. In this one respect, at least, these teams can be thought of as the polar opposites of Texas (percentage of possession-minutes returning: 100) or Wisconsin (85).
Here are your leading mystery teams for 2014-15.
Syracuse Orange
Percentage of possession-minutes returning: 33
Jim Boeheim's group constitutes the largest statistical mystery of any