Competition or cohesion?

One of the few advantages that teams at our level occasionally have is that we have players who play together for several years, and thus the cohesiveness of the team overcomes to some degree the superior talent of higher level teams. I am looking forward to the competition for playing time with this team. It ought to be intense, and that ought to make the team better. However, another part of me hopes that the parts shake out fairly quickly so that the main players will have plenty of time to get into sync as a unit. Not knowing each other and not having played much together is going to be one of the weaknesses of this team. Hopefully, upgraded talent will overcome that, but we need to get into a groove as a team with each player knowing his role as quickly as possible. Of course, by conference play that ought to be an old issue, but it would be nice to make a splash early with a few nice non-conference wins, also.