Malcolm Gilbert has had Pitt’s eye for some time. Over this summer, Gilbert had put Pitt at the top of his list. The 6-11 center apparently decided to join Pitt’s already solid recruiting class.

“Just a great fit for me both athletically and academically — Jamie Dixon is a great coach with great experience and he’ll make me a much better player plus Pitt’s consistency of success makes it a great fit,” said Gilbert on why he committed to the Panthers.

The 6-foot-11 center was one of the top remaining post players in the class. He and his family felt the fit and timing was right for a commitment.

“My family is really in favor of the choice and even though the decision was mine it feels good that we’re all on the same page,” Gilbert said. “It takes a little bit of stress off my shoulders and allows me to focus on my senior year goals both with academics and athletics.”

Gilbert is also an outstanding student that had legitimate interest in, and from, Ivy League schools.

Guess we don’t have to worry about whether he can meet the academic qualifications.

Scout.com and ESPN.com/Scouts, Inc. have him as a verbal to Pitt. Rivals.com does not yet.

He’s considered the #!6 or 17 center prospect in the 2011 class. Both Scout.com and Rivals.com put him as a 3-star recruit, while ESPN.com is a bit higher on him. The ESPN.com profile is a year out of date (Insider subs), but it sure seems to describe a Coach Dixon project center to a “T.”

August, 2009: Gilbert is a post player whose defense is far ahead of his offense at this stage in his career. He has very long arms and good timing which helps him block and change shots. He is not a very good defender on the perimeter at this stage because he does not have incredibly quick feet. Smaller, quicker posts blow by him, but he makes up for it with his length and good timing. When he catches in the post, he uses the spin move to try and score. He also likes to face up and has huge hands that help him catch good and bad passes. He does a good job of passing out of the double team from the post and likes to go over his left shoulder for his turnaround jump shot in the post.

Pitt beat out Wake Forest, Ohio St., Virginia, Clemson and VT for the big man.

The thing about his verbal that will fuel discussion and speculation is that he is Pitt’s 4th verbal for this class. Pitt only has 3 seniors (Gil Brown, Gary McGhee and Brad Wanamaker). That means renewed speculation on who might be transferring after this season or whether one of the 4 incoming recruits may struggle with academic qualifications.

Football stuff that indirectly relates to Pitt and the Big East that are worth noting.

The AP has redesigned their poll page. It’s better, and easier to read individual ballots by voters, but Pollspeak is still the better option because of its versatility. The trump for Pollspeak is the fact that you can see on one webpage how all voters voted in a particular week for a team. That is much easier to figure out which voters hate your team or are clueless homers (I’m looking at you, Eric Hansen of the South Bend Tribune for not ranking Pitt, but putting ND #22).

Relating to the MWC/WAC and BYU stuff from last week, one of the things that came out near the end of the week were talks between the MWC and C-USA.

Two sources with knowledge of the discussions told the Orlando Sentinel on Thursday one of the scenarios being discussed includes a possible merger of 20 teams from the Mountain West Conference and Conference USA, with the champion claiming an automatic BCS bowl bid. However, the sources stated such an agreement is complex, could easily fall apart and is far from being completed.

That would be something interesting. As both conferences also have TV deals that involve CBS media (C-USA on CBS College Sports and WMC’s “Mtn.” channel has CBS as a partner), there could be something to this.

The benefits to C-USA are obvious. Keeps the MWC from raiding their conference for Houston or SMU or Southern Miss. It also gives the conference a shot at BCS bowls. Not a great shot, but far better than they have right now.

The benefit of this alliance for the MWC is less clear, other than to provide some more protection if BYU decides to bolt or TCU gets a call from the Big 12/10 at some point. For the MWC, the benefits may be more long-term.

In case you missed it, this is a fine timeline of Big East expansion rumors in history. And from the Mountain West, well-learned advice on dating Cougars.

There’s a rhythm to training camp media coverage. The first few days is about how the players look, what the coaches are saying, and just general optimism. The players are without pads, and just doing drills.

Then the pads go on and the hitting starts. The reports are about what is happening on the practice field. Injuries, who looks good, bad, moving up the depth chart. How the units are looking.

As always, there are individual stories spaced in there. But at the end of camp. That’s when the individual stories dominate. It is all that is left for a while. There isn’t much more to write about practices. Depth charts are mostly set. It is really about counting down to the first kickoff.

That means most of the stories start focusing on individual players and the soft-focus puff pieces. Let’s hit them quickly.

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Just want to get some of these out, before I try to catch up on the training camp football material that I’ve fallen behind on, yet again.

Mike DeCourcy at the Sporting News (now with a new and even slower loading format) has a piece on Pitt’s now deep frontcourt.

“I think he’s going to play minutes. I think he’s going to be good,” Dixon said.  “I think [Talib] Zanna is going to give us a different look with his length and his size at the 4. It gives us another option.”

Undersized Nasir Robinson started at power forward last season alongside 6-10 center Gary McGhee, and Robinson figures to remain in that position this season.

But Dixon is pleased that Zanna’s emergence and the continued development of 6-7 Texan J.J. Richardson brings a greater degree of size and physicality to the frontcourt and should give the Panthers five players to rotate at the two power positions.

McGhee and 6-10 sophomore Dante Taylor are the team’s centers. Richardson showed last season he can play there, as well.

“I think we’ll end up playing bigger,” Dixon said. “Our big guys played well in Ireland. We saw that happen in practice, too.”

Zanna shot .636 (21-of-33) from the field for the Panthers in the five games overseas and averaged 8 points and 7 rebounds.

Assuming for a moment that Pitt does indeed go big more often, I think the guy that sees his minutes squeezed more than anyone else will be Travon Woodall. He was already going to find minutes a little tougher with Isiah Epps and J.J. Moore pushing for time in the backcourt and to play wing.  Nothing I’ve read regarding the summer league shows that he has gained more consistency with his shooting touch.

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