A few pieces on the national sites. Over at SI.com Stewart Mandel lists his very early top-25. He puts Pitt at #21

Spring star: RB Rashad Jennings. The freshman wasted no time establishing himself as the Panthers’ feature back.

Lowdown: Dave Wannstedt spent his first spring installing a power-running mentality that should make the Panthers more balanced and, in turn, more dangerous offensively. Similarly, the defense will have more of a “pro” look, but it may lack enough impact players along the line to be dominant.

Louisville was ranked #12.

And he had this to say in his review of spring practices:

Pittsburgh: Though he has at his disposal one of the nation’s most promising quarterbacks in Tyler Palko, coach Dave Wannstedt spent much of the spring trying to convert the Panthers from the finesse style of predecessor Walt Harris into more of a power running team. In doing so, he found a potential star-in-the-making in freshman RB Rashad Jennings, who carried 19 times for 119 yards in the spring game and likely will be the opening-day starter.

Expectations keep rising.

Over at ESPN.com, Bruce Feldman lists his hot 100 players.

The college football season is still a few months away, but it’s time to take a preseason look at the Hot 100 list for 2005. As always, this isn’t a projection in regards to draft prospects, but simply a run-through of who will be the biggest impact/value guys to their programs in the ’05 season.
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51. Tyler Palko, Pitt, QB: Should be even better now that he’s working with Matt Cavanaugh.
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75. Greg Lee, Pittsburgh, WR: A combination of Larry Fitzgerald and Antonio Bryant and he gets to work with a better QB than they had.

H.B. Blades was ignored.