And the honor goes to Sam Collura, a TE from DeMatha in Hyattsville, Maryland.

Not a high-starred prospect at either recruiting site, but there seemed to be a lot of interest — without offers. He is part of another loaded group at DeMatha.

Pitt’s junior weekend just happened to coincide with a Nike Football Combine in Pittsburgh.

More than 500 prospects from states as far away as Tennessee and Kentucky in addition to Canada came out to compete.

Corey Jones of Penn Hills (Pittsburgh, Pa.) and Jermaine Thornton of Erie East (Erie, Pa.) posted the top 40-yard dash time and vertical jump respectively at the event.

A 5-foot-8, 158-pound rising sophomore, Ross Douglas of Avon (Avon, Ohio), was another underclassman that turned heads on Saturday.

There’s a list of the top-7 standouts from the event.

Hopefully Pitt will nab a few more early commits from the weekend.

You know this really annoyed me. I was thinking after the Pitt win yesterday how Gary McGhee could very well be Pitt’s most improved player and be in play for the Big East’s award. Unfortunately, Bob Smizik beat me to it and went to hyperbolic extremes in extolling McGhee’s virtues.

If McGhee doesn’t win the award, there should be an investigation. In fact, if he doesn’t win it unanimously there should be an investigation.

Furthermore, after this season they should name it the Gary McGhee Award.

McGhee, a 6-foot-10 junior from Anderson, Ind., was the proverbial guy who couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time during his first two seasons at Pitt.

What were those first two years like? Here’s what the Pitt media guide says about McGhee‘s career prior to this season:

“. . . his most memorable contest was a six-point, four-rebound performance at South Florida.’’

In his first two season, McGhee played in 52 games, averaged six minutes, 1.5 rebounds and 1.3 points.

Anyone who expected to see significant changes in those numbers this season simply isn’t telling the truth. McGhee looked to have no future at Pitt other than sitting on the bench.

But look what’s happened to Gary McGhee.

He can shoot, he can pass, he can rebound and, brother, he can defend.

I’m not arguing with it. Not only has McGhee vastly improved from his first two years, his improvements from the start of the season to this point have been incredible. Or have they?

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Jermaine Dixon may have gotten a trans-Atlantic peptalk at 3 am, but that lack of sleep might have had something to do with 3-15 shooting.

Dixon still draws a lot of his motivation from Fields, who is currently playing in Russia. The two speak regularly on the computer. Dixon, in fact, called Fields at 3 a.m. yesterday morning to get some last-minute inspiration.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Dixon said. “And it’s the middle of the morning over there. I asked him how he was going over there and he told me make sure we get the victory and make sure we play hard and our goal should be to win the Big East.”

Isn’t Skype great? On a personal level for Jermaine Dixon, it was a measure of revenge. He doesn’t pretend otherwise.

“This one feels pretty good,” Dixon said with just about the biggest grin you’ll ever see on a college kid’s face.

Dixon enjoyed frustrating Scottie Reynolds for most of the game. Reynolds for his part was frustrated that he couldn’t penetrate with ease.

Brace yourself for this, but Doug Gottlieb had a good breakdown of what Pitt did to stop Reynolds in the game in College GameDay Final Sunday night/Monday morning. He showed how Pitt made sure someone always stayed between Reynolds and the basket to force him to give it up or pass out rather than go to the hoop and/or draw the foul on a big guy inside. Even when Pitt switched up on the perimeter a Pitt player would actually slide in front and risk leaving a ‘Nova player open in the corners to keep Reynolds from the basket.

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