I wanted to stick to football for the rest of the week, but I had a basketball post that I thought was posted on Monday. Instead it never posted and never ended up in drafts or anywhere else it could be. It has me ticked off, and I can’t just skip it until after the Miami game (I have issues) so I’m re-doing it now.

This article on Pitt from Mike DeCourcy seems to be getting around, because of Pitt’s confidence.

Pittsburgh coach Jamie Dixon surely raised a Big East eyebrow or two when he declared to Sporting News magazine, “We could be as good as any team we’ve ever had.”

Only two seasons ago, the Panthers earned their first-ever No. 1 NCAA Tournament seed and reached the NCAA Tournament Elite Eight behind future NBA players and Sporting News All-Americans Sam Young and DeJuan Blair. This Pitt team, though coming off a 25-9 season and returning five of that team’s top six scorers, features no obvious NBA prospects.

So can this team really expect to exceed the ‘09 Panthers? Pitt hasn’t made a Final Four since the 1940s.

“The sky is the limit for this team,” Panthers G Brad Wanamaker told Sporting News. “As long as we stay together and do the right things ¬we can maybe go to the Final Four or win a national championship.

“They always say pros can get you the farthest in the NCAAs. Well, in our own mindset, we think we’re pros, too. We think we have a chance to play in the NBA.”

For the last couple of years, Coach Dixon has been very upfront about declaring that there are no limits to what the team can accomplish. He has also, increasingly challenged the players to buy into that approach. The comments from Wanamaker and Gilbert Brown in the story reflect that.

The point that there are no clear 1st round NBA draft picks on this team right now, yet Pitt is roundly ranked in preseason top-10s reflects how the media is reaching the point of automatically assuming Pitt will be a winning team.

Speaking of the expectations, Slam online has their Big East preview and tabs Pitt for the top spot in what they think will be a good but not great Big East.

As always though, it is deep, with as many as 12 (by my count) teams with legitimate NCAA Tournament aspirations. How many elite teams does the Big East have this season though?

If the Pitt basketball program were a publicly traded company, it would be Microsoft. No one talks about Microsoft anymore because, let’s be honest, it’s not nearly as exciting as Apple (who’s goes to Best Buy thinking Zune before iPad?), but year after year, Microsoft churns out profitable quarters. Pitt doesn’t produce many NBA players (Round Mound of Rebound 2.0 DeJuan Blair comes to mind as the only former Panther in recent history succeeding in the NBA) and doesn’t earn any style points, but Jamie Dixon’s program pumps out winning season after winning season, regardless of the personnel. People may say Pitt annually overachieves (then underachieves once March rolls around), but the truth is Panther basketball’s reliance on toughness, grit, and tenacious defense is the most consistent formula for good basketball and the reason for the school’s remarkable steadiness. After winning 25 games a year ago with a largely unproven roster, almost everyone, including Ashton Gibbs, Gilbert Brown, and Brad Wannamaker, returns for a season full of expectations. A season without a Big East Championship or a deep run into March would be a disappointment.

Just looking at the conference as a whole, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot of teams from the 5-13 spots finishing with 10-8 to 7-11 records. A lot of bunching in the middle is reasonable to expect.

The Dagger is Yahoo!’s college basketball blog. They did a Big East preview series nearly two weeks ago, but I’m only now getting to it. It’s heavy on lists, as is common in off-season stories

They look at the top storylines in the conference. Naturally Pitt leads things off.

1. Can Pittsburgh go from very good to elite?

The most pressing question facing Pittsburgh entering the new season is whether the Panthers can improve on last season’s surprising success now that opponents know they’ll be good.

Expected to take a step backward last season after the departure of Sam Young, Levance Fields and DeJuan Blair, the Panthers instead won 25 games and earned second place in the Big East. They return the core of that team next season, leading to optimism among fans that this could finally be the year that Pittsburgh makes it to its first Final Four.

Playing a starring role for the Panthers will be guard Ashton Gibbs, who returns as a junior after averaging 15.6 points per game and hitting 39 percent of his threes in a breakout sophomore season. Production from backcourt mate Brad Wannamaker and forwards Gilbert Brown and Gary McGhee will also be crucial, but the key to Pittsburgh taking a step forward might be highly recruited sophomore forward Dante Taylor living up to his hype.

I’m fairly optimistic about Taylor coming into this season. I think there was a lot of pressure on him to step in and be at least 75% of what DeJuan Blair did, despite the fact that most freshmen frontcourt players have a steeper learning curve. Blair was the rare exception in production that usually is reserved for only the top 3 to 5 freshmen frontcourt players. There’s a little less pressure on Taylor with a team that has depth, experience and talent all over the court.

The Dagger also lists some of the top games tied to the conference — non-con and conference. Pitt is noted for the Maryland game and against ‘Nova. They tried to spread it out a bit, so no place for the Backyard Brawl, I guess.

Finally they have ex-WVU pain-in-the-ass, Mike Gansey talk about the Big East for the upcoming season. He plays it safe by going with the crowd and saying it will be Pitt or ‘Nova to win the conference. He also gives the right answer to the question of the toughest place to play in the Big East.

I hated playing at Pittsburgh. They were our rival and that was always such a tough place to play with the fans are all over you. The Backyard Brawl was always a really fun night in Pittsburgh.

The Gansey column also has a useful sidebar of useful Twitterers to follow. Wisely, they have me on the list.