Also known as, “We don’t need no stinkin’ rankings.”

The snap judgments are out. Good news. Pitt wasn’t the worst recruiting class in the Big East.

Scout.com, put Pitt’s at 6th (55th nationally), ahead of USF and UConn. Rivals.com said 5th ahead of USF, UConn and Syracuse. UConn’s recruiting class was last in all rankings. This, despite losing only one good player (to Penn State) after Edsall departed. Given the position of UConn’s class, there might be a correlation to that.

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The Bearcats are better than they were last year. They have slowly, painfully, grudgingly gotten a little better every year since Mick Cronin took over the team. The talent has improved. They have gotten a touch more consistent. Yet, they remain mired somewhere in the middle of the Big East. Somewhere in that 7th-12th best team.

Some of that is certainly attributable to the fact that the Big East is so tough and strong, and that teams at the top (and even upper-middle) just haven’t budged much.

“I refer to the situation that Mick went into as being about as close to a death penalty as there was in college basketball,” Dixon said, “because they really had no players at all once he got the job. They have gotten better every year and that is more than you can ask. Getting better every year is another rare and nearly impossible feat to do in our conference because, you need some teams to take a step backward.

“There have been a lot of teams in our league waiting for teams to take a step backward and there haven’t been too many of those.”

This year, especially, the wide swath of the middle. That encompasses the 5th to 12th teams looks so much stronger. Cinci, St. John’s, WVU, Marquette, Syracuse, Georgetown, UConn, Seton Hall. Heck Providence and Rutgers at 13th and 14th. A lot of improved teams that give tough conference battles, but don’t still find themselves near their usual spots in the conference.

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