I rounded up a collection of team and conference predictions from national outlets to see what the consensus was. Pretty much all fell around an improved, middle of the Big East, non-tournament team.
https://painttouches.com/2016/11/10/pundit-predictions-for-mu-2016-17/ (https://painttouches.com/2016/11/10/pundit-predictions-for-mu-2016-17/)
Pretty fair assessments, overall, but will be interesting to come back and gauge the accuracy in a few months.