The new Pitt CBA team drafted its players.

The second-year Xplosion, a member of the American Basketball Association last year, will compete in the CBA in 2006-07. The CBA is returning to Pittsburgh for the first time since 1994-95, when the Piranhas won the Eastern Division and lost to Yakima, Wash., in the final in their only season.

The Piranhas played their home games at Palumbo Center and averaged about 2,500 fans per game.

The Xplosion, which played in front of crowds between 750 and 1,000, plans to continue playing most of their home games at Mellon Arena and a few at Petersen Center. The CBA’s 48-game schedule begins in early December and runs through the end of March.

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The Xplosion has a new owner, Trinity Sports and Entertainment Group, a Florida corporation formed earlier this year by former NFL quarterback Jay Fiedler, five-time NBA All-Star Tim Hardaway and businessman Demetrius Ford. TSEG also owns several other CBA franchises.

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The Xplosion selected six players in the CBA draft conducted Tuesday — 6-foot-11 Kevin Pittsnogle (West Virginia University), 6-8 Kelly Whitney (Seton Hall), 6-10 Tedric Hill (Gulf Coast CC), 6-4 Hassan Adams (Arizona), 6-7 Jai Lewis (George Mason) and 6-2 Carl Krauser (Pitt).

Naturally, you can expect many of these players to jump at the opportunity.

Pittsnogle recently signed a two-year contract with the NBA Boston Celtics for $1.1 million if he fulfills both years, and Krauser has signed to play professionally this season in Germany for the EWE Baskets Oldenburg, a First Division I team. The Xplosion has the rights to their draft choices for two years.

Uh, huh.

A couple pieces on some verbals for Pitt’s 2007 recruiting class.

When you are a WPIAL football player who is headed to Pitt, often, the focus is on you.

That is where Thomas Jefferson senior Dom DeCicco is right now.

DeCicco has given a verbal commitment to coach Dave Wannstedt’s program and the ongoing renewal of Panthers football.

That said, DeCicco, 6 feet 3, 205 pounds, knows that the focus is on him this season when he lines up at quarterback, returns kicks, plays a little receiver and also defensive back for the Jaguars.

“You kind of feel like you have to show what you can do all the time,” DeCicco said. “You know that there are a lot of local Pitt fans interested in what you are doing and how you are playing. I think it is a little bit of you having to show those Pitt fans that you deserved the scholarship that coach Wannstedt gave you.”

DeCicco has been living up to the hype as the best player on the top ranked team in the WPIAL Class AAA rankings and the PIAA. Tomorrow, Thomas Jefferson plays Keystone Oaks. A team with two other players who have verballed to Pitt, Chris Jacobson and Myles Caragein.

By now, just about everyone who follows high school and college football closely is familiar with Chris Jacobson.

They know that he attends Keystone Oaks High School, that he gave a verbal commitment to Pitt earlier this year before other colleges could even sniff him out, and that the 6-foot-3, 290-pound guard has been invited to the prestigious U.S. Army All-American Bowl.

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Four hundred of the game’s best high school players were nominated to play, including Keystone Oaks’ Myles Caragein. It was announced on Friday prior to KO’s game with Elizabeth Forward that Jacobson had been invited; Caragein still has a shot, according to Kamberis.

You can put absolutely no stock in this. Just a gut feeling that could be totally wrong, but I think Pitt should be getting some more recruiting announcements in the next week or so.

Man I hate it when the Graduation Success Rates come out. It’s such stale data.

The NCAA released graduation rates for Division I athletes yesterday, and Pitt’s rates improved, which continues a trend that began last year.

The report released yesterday is different from the federal graduation rate, called the Academic Progress Rate. The NCAA releases the graduation success rate or GSR, which, unlike the federal graduation rate, does not penalize schools for players who transfer from an institution in good academic standing.

The report does not reflect the current progress of student-athletes at the institutions. The report released yesterday instead reflects rates from 1996-99.

Pitt’s GSR for all sports is 77 percent, up from 74 percent a year ago. The football and basketball team improved greatly from the rates of a year ago. The football team increased from 48 percent to 54 percent, and the basketball team jumped from 29 percent to 57 percent.

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To put the report into perspective, roughly half the Pitt football players represented in the report were recruited by Johnny Majors. The others were recruited by Walt Harris. For basketball, more than three quarters of the players were recruited by Ralph Willard, the rest by Ben Howland.

Long pointed out that the one-year graduation rate for the 1999 basketball class is 100 percent. The one-year rate for the football team is 67 percent.

Two head coaches later in football and basketball and we are still dealing with that dreadful period of Pitt athletics.