Just noticed that Pitt dropped a notch to #23 in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll — Marquette leapfrogged Pitt because they actually played and won a meaningful game — despite a 6-0 start. Meanwhile, the AP Writers Poll has Pitt moving up to #20.

The polls are meaningless, and as I have said, no one really has an idea about whether this Pitt team will be as good, better or worse until the conference play begins. The only thing that does have me worried about the Coaches Poll, is that there isn’t much Big East representation this year. Something that doesn’t help in getting votes, because there won’t be much attention paid to Pitt.

The Board of Coaches is made up of 30 head coaches at Division I institutions. All are members of the National Association of Basketball Coaches. The 2001-02 voters: Dana Altman, Creighton; Eddie Biedenbach, UNC-Asheville; Jim Boeheim, Syracuse; Rickey Broussard, Nicholls St.; Barry Collier, Nebraska; Dick Davey, Santa Clara; Fran Dunphy, Pennsylvania; Jessie Evans, Louisiana-Lafayette; Rob Evans, Arizona State; Steve Fisher, San Diego State; Patrick Flannery, Bucknell; Tom Green, Fairleigh Dickinson; Dan Hipsher, Akron; Bob Huggins, Cincinnati; Gene Keady, Purdue; Jim Kerwin, Western Illinois; Mack McCarthy, Virginia Commonwealth; Bobby McKillop, Davidson; Joe Mihalich, Niagara; Ron Mitchell, Coppin State, Dave Odom, South Carolina; Oliver Purnell, Dayton; Rick Samuels, Eastern Illinois; Joel Sobotka, Portland State; Kirk Speraw, Central Florida; Bob Thomason, Pacific; Perry Watson, Detroit Mercy; Davey Whitney, Alcorn State; Gary Williams, Maryland; Willis Wilson, Rice; Dennis Wolff, Boston University.

Emphasis and Italics added. Cincinnati joins the Big East in 2005.

If Pitt stumbles in the non-conference, they could easily fall out of the polls and have a more difficult time climbing back into it. Just my paranoid thought for the day.

ESPN has a “Bowl Mania” game. Pick the winners of all 28 bowls. It is a confidence game. Meaning:

Instructions: Pick the winner of each game and predict the final team scores of the Sugar Bowl. The higher the confidence you assign to a bowl game, the more points you will earn if you have selected the winning team. Confidence value must be between 1 and 28 and unique for each game. You can change picks until kickoff of the first selectable bowl listed.

Pitt Sports Blather has a public group. Hopefully the other members of PSB will be playing. Find out how Lee will do with 28 games within a 3 week period. Learn just how confident we are about Pitt. We get to learn if we have any readers.

The contest is open until the first bowl game on December 16, 7 pm EST.

The first lines that I’ve seen on the Continental Tire Bowl favor the Virginia Cavaliers over our Pitt Panthers by 2.5 points. Given how well the Cavaliers dominated Virginia Tech in the trenches, I’m not sure that I won’t give those points. But let me think about it a little more…

In other news, Oklahoma is favored by six over LSU (I’ll definitely take the Sooners there), Kansas State is favored by seven over Ohio State (as I’ve always said, nobody gets overrated like the Wildcats), USC is favored by 6.5 over Michigan (I don’t know where to go on that one), and Maryland is favored by 3.5 over the Hoopies (I’ll probably take the Hoopies over the Terrapins again, even though that pick burned me earlier this year).

I’ll make my official picks later. These are just my first musings.

Switching over to Pitt Basketball, if you’re the type of sick bastard who takes pleasure in the suffering and self-flagellation of others (and don’t we all?), check out the Centre Daily Times‘s coverage of Pitt’s hanging a 64-37 ass-kicking on Penn State this past Saturday.

Hail to Happy Valley Misery