Back to the fun stuff.

Power polls from the various sports sites. Unanimity, for this week at least, is good.

Luke Winn at SI.com:

These Power Rankings begin with an exclusive What-If Scenario: In the course of reporting the James Harden feature that’s in this week’s SI, I stumbled across a Pitt story: Arizona State assistant Scott Pera — the former Artesia High coach whom Harden followed to Tempe — told me he had discussions with Pitt’s Jamie Dixon about job opportunities in the spring of 2006. The Sun Devils made the first move on Pera in late May, and he left Artesia to become their director of basketball operations. The first day Pera was starting work at ASU, Dixon called him to say, “I’m ready to move now [and offer you a job].” Pera, who grew up in Hershey, Pa., might have accepted that offer had it come much earlier. He said that he wasn’t sure if Harden, an L.A. kid, would have been willing to make the same cross-country jump. “You should ask James that,” Pera said. “I’d be interested to hear what he says.” So I asked Harden. And he said, “Yeah, I would have gone [to Pitt]. That’s a great program, coach Dixon is a great coach, and that would have been a good opportunity for me, too. I didn’t want to stay in L.A.” Pitt fans, could you imagine having a starting lineup of Levance Fields, Harden, Sam Young, DeJuan Blair and Tyrell Biggs?

And Pitt fans are accused of never being satisified.

ESPN.com had Pitt ranked at the top. Two of their ten voting analysts kept UNC at #1. Jay Bilas was one of them, I think everyone and their dog knows who the other was — but he swears no malice (Insider subs).

FoxSports doesn’t grasp permalinks in their power rankings. So, this will change over time. Still, for now.

The good: The Panthers are enjoying their first No. 1 ranking in school history after thumping Big East rival Georgetown on its home floor with a double-digit win. The bad: Pitt proved with its win over the Hoyas that it can play with the big boys despite a soft non-conference schedule, but things get tough later this month with road games at Louisville, West Virginia and Villanova.

Finally, it is time for some hardcore number crunching. John Gasaway at Basketball Prospectus has sung the praises of their offensive performance. Now he hits on game planning against Pitt.

With all this talent and all these skills, the game plan for any Pitt opponent is two-fold: force the Panthers to shoot threes and keep Blair (and his teammates) off the offensive glass. The dilemma posed by Pitt, of course, is that the best way to accomplish the former objective, a zone, inhibits accomplishing the second goal.

Or does it? Consider Syracuse last year. The Orangemen have long been synonymous with the term “zone defense.” Yet somehow way back in 2008 Jim Boeheim’s team managed to combine zone D with excellent defensive rebounding. Future Pitt opponents, take heart! True, it didn’t work out so well for Georgetown but maybe you can have your zone and your boards too. The ‘Cuse did it last year with strength in numbers: Donte Greene, Arinze Onuaku and Paul Harris, in particular. Other Big East teams might try to do the same, given the Panthers’ iffy perimeter shooting. So far this season Pitt has made exactly one in every three of its attempts from beyond the arc.

…

Is Pitt the best team in the country? A better question might be: who are the best teams? Carolina may have lost at home to Boston College but the Tar Heels will rise again. (After all, last year the Final Four-bound Heels lost at home to a team, Maryland, that didn’t even make the NCAA tournament.) As for Pitt, well, clearly they’ve already risen. Until further notice the best teams in the country include, at a minimum, UNC and the Panthers, warts and all.

And right now, that is all you want to be. Considered one of the best teams. No one wins anything now.