Pitt came out running, as promised. Sam Young is excited.

“In the past, we’ve been known for our defense,” Young said. “We always had the opportunity to get fastbreak points, but we were always a halfcourt team, so we didn’t take advantage of our opportunities. But now that we’re more mobile and more agile, we’re going to take advantage of our opportunities. We’re going to blow teams out and get them out of the way early instead of holding the ball and wasting time.”

The new style seems to fit Young perfectly. He had three highlight-reel dunks in the opening minutes, including one windmill and two off alley-oop passes, one of which came from Blair.

“I’ve played this way all my life,” Young said. “Then I get here and I’m supposed to slow it down a little bit. I feel they weren’t taking advantage of my strengths. This is definitely more my style. I feel more of a need to make things happen.”

It is no shock that Young likes it at a faster pace. At times in his freshman and sophomore years, it seemed like he was trying to out run the Pitt offense. The big concern with Young, though will be his commitment to play defense and his health.

Q: After watching the two exhibition games, Sam Young looks healthier and more aggressive than last year. He is also playing a position where he is more comfortable. Is he ready for a break-out year?

FITTIPALDO: All signs point to Young having a good season, Marc. He led Pitt in scoring in the two exhibition games and has been Pitt’s first option in a lot of the offensive sets. I can see Young averaging 14 points and seven rebounds a game if his knees hold up. That will be the big question. He is taking better care of the knees this season, but we’ll have to see how he holds up over the long haul.

After pasting Houston Baptist, next up is North Carolina A&T (PDF). Presumably Pitt won’t be looking past that game to Sunday, but I know I am and so are others.

Game worth driving to see in person: Rick Majerus’ official return to coaching is Friday night, but it is Sunday that he can make national headlines. His Saint Louis Billikens are in Pittsburgh for the Hispanic College Fund Classic, and they’ll get a shot at Jamie Dixon’s Pitt Panthers in the event’s closing contest.

I’ll just be thrilled to watch on regular TV. The online video feed gives me a bit of a headache.

I don’t think it fully dawned on me that it was actually hoops season until I wrote that last post about the 103-62 win over Houston Baptist.

The absolute best collaboration of bracket predictions is the Bracket Project. It’s amazing and amazingly pointless to predict the brackets at any point during the season, especially before the season even starts, but Pitt’s average projected seed is currently on the 7 line. The highest projection for Pitt is 3 and the lowest is 9.

BigEastHoops.com sees Pitt finishing 9th in the Big East since we have “nothing in the middle.” Presumably because they’re not familiar with Dejuan Blair.

9. Pitt – Their dynasty is over. With Gray and Kendall leaving, Pitt is left with nothing in the middle. In a league that has such great big men, the Panthers will struggle to beat the top teams. The backcourt of Cook, Ramon and Fields are very good. But with no inside game, Pitt will struggle to find points. They’ll still beat the weak teams of the league, but I can’t see them finishing much higher than 9th.

Blair won’t lead this team to a conference title, but I think he’ll keep Pitt from falling as far as 9th or worse.

Big East Basketball Report compiled a preseason power poll as well as conference awards.

2007-2008 Big East Pre-season Poll (first place votes in parenthesis):

1) Georgetown (13): 282 pts. Hi: 1st. Low: 3rd.
2) Louisville (5): 274 pts. Hi: 1st. Low: 3rd.
3) Marquette: 243 pts. Hi: 3rd. Low: 5th.
4) Syracuse: 206 pts. Hi: 3rd. Low: 8th.
5) Pittsburgh (tie): 200 pts. Hi: 3rd. Low: 10th.
5) Villanova (tie): 200 pts. Hi: 2nd. Low: 8th.
7) Connecticut: 195 pts. Hi: 3rd. Low: 10th.
8) Providence: 165 pts. Hi: 4th. Low: 10th.
9) Notre Dame: 154 pts. Hi: 5th. Low: 12th
10) West Virginia: 142 pts. Hi: 4th. Low: 11th.
11) Seton Hall: 98 pts. Hi: 9th. Low: 14th.
12) DePaul: 84 pts. Hi: 9th. Low: 16th.
13) Cincinnati: 82 pts. Hi: 10th. Low: 15th.
14) St. John’s: 57 pts. Hi: 10th. Low: 16th.
15) South Florida: 35 pts. Hi: 13th. Low: 16th.
16) Rutgers: 31 pts. Hi: 14th. Low: 16th.

Seems like Pitt is one of the toughest teams to gauge, with their high-low differential of 7 (10-3=7) is only tied by UConn and DePaul — DePaul doesn’t really count though, because they’re near the bottom and once you get closer to #11 or so, all of the teams are similarly bad.

The preseason awards portion has Levance Fields on the all-conference 3rd team, Dejuan Blair on the all-freshman 2nd team, and Bradley Wannamaker on the freshman honorable mention list.

Continuing HBU’s theme of brutal honesty, with coach Ron Cottrell’s post-game quote.

“I kind of had a feeling that was coming.”

Both the AP and Trib stories started with Pitt’s fast-break, quick, and dunk offense that put up 103 points against Houston Baptist’s 62. Sam Young led all scorers with 22 followed by Dejuan Blair (20 points), playing in his first game.

“My first game, yeah, I would say it’s an excellent game,” Blair said.

“I had fun out there,” Blair said. “It was an excellent game. My teammates make me feel comfortable. I wasn’t nervous at all. I felt great, actually. Everybody made me feel welcome.”

It took about four minutes before the Panthers hit a 13-0 lead and they definitely never looked back. Young and Blair both seemed to like the style of play with all of the alley-oops and quick passing, but I doubt it’s a trend that will continue much longer. Dixon commented that he liked the passing and that the team as a whole passes very well.

Pitt’s next two opponents played the early game at the Pete. North Carolina A&T lost to Rick Majerus’ Saint Louis team, 54-43. Looks like I’ll be able to see the St. Louis game in person; hopefully this doesn’t fall through.