The Pitt Fan Fest is this Saturday, and a week later Pitt plays its first exhibition game (against the Tartans of Carnegie Mellon). The Fan Fest also features a video game competition for the students — you can win t-shirts!

Some Pitt students feel like the ticket system screwed them (via CollegeBasketball Blog). I have no way of confirming if there was a problem.

The Big East is still trying to figure out how it will schedule the b-ball games as a 16 team bloated behemoth of a conference (my abbreviated feelings about the New Big East Basketball conference from last year are here — I’m going to have to update and maybe detail a little more my thoughts someday).

Big East presidents face an important decision when they meet November 2: How many league games should teams play starting next season? There will be 16 members after Louisville, Marquette, DePaul, Cincinnati and South Florida join, so a double round-robin is out of the question. The presidents want to avoid a sense of detachment inside the league, so it’s almost certain all teams will play each other once. The issue is whether teams should play a home-and-home series against one rival (for a 16-game schedule) or three (18 games). Some athletic directors and coaches prefer the 16-game format because of concern league members will beat up one another and hurt their pursuit of NCAA Tournament at-large berths. . . .

It will also come down to money. Pitt has just about all their non-cons at home. They wouldn’t like to lose even one or two home game receipts. I suspect other teams may have similar feelings.

ESPN.com with Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook has its look at all teams. Unfortunately, to see the teams it is subscription only — ESPN Insider, except for free previews of UConn (and Wake Forest). The reviews are rather long, so I can’t really excerpt the whole Pitt preview without running into some nasty copyright violation issues. I think, though, looking at their preview, they expect Pitt to be around #3-5 in the Big East.

UConn
BACKCOURT: A-
BENCH/DEPTH: A-
FRONTCOURT: A-
INTANGIBLES: A
Syracuse
BACKCOURT: A-
BENCH/DEPTH: B+
FRONTCOURT: A-
INTANGIBLES: A+
Notre Dame
BACKCOURT: A
BENCH/DEPTH: B
FRONTCOURT: B
INTANGIBLES: A
Providence
BACKCOURT: B+
BENCH/DEPTH: B-
FRONTCOURT: A
INTANGIBLES: B+

Boston College
BACKCOURT: B
BENCH/DEPTH: B+
FRONTCOURT: B+
INTANGIBLES: C+

Pitt
BACKCOURT: B
BENCH/DEPTH: B
FRONTCOURT: B+
INTANGIBLES: A

Essentially for Pitt, like last year, they think the losses of key players creates a lot of questions. It’s part of the reason Pitt is where it is in the pre-season rankings. The talent is there, but how will it work this year? I think they overrate Providence and Notre Dame a bit and underrate Boston College.

I’ll give my predictions for the conference this year, next week.