It can be really easy to take a team like Rutgers lightly. The game is at the Pete, Rutgers stinks, they have no depth, and, well, they are Rutgers. Luckily, Ruters had a big upset over Villanova this week.

That should hold the team’s attention.

“Of course we’re going to get a little rowdy up in here and make it a tough place to play, but I’m sure they’re going to come in here with a little chip on their shoulder,” Pitt junior forward Sam Young said. “It’s a conference game, so we’ll be ready to play.

“A team like (Rutgers), their back’s against the wall. They have nothing to lose. They’re only goal is to put you down. You’re playing against a team like that, and they’re going to go all out and come smack at you.”

Rutgers promises to test Pitt’s perimeter defense, as it uses four players on the outside. Junior forward JR Inman is the leading scorer at 14.2 points a game, but guard Anthony Farmer and Mike Coburn are coming off career highs with 23 points apiece against Villanova.

Of course Rutgers isn’t going to be too confident about going to the Pete.

Pittsburgh is 75-8 in that building over the last four-and-a-half seasons and 11-0 this winter. Rutgers junior J.R. Inman never has played there, but he heard all about it from Pitt forward Tyrell Biggs, who is a good friend.

“I was speaking with him last night … he told me no one comes into the Zoo and wins,” Inman said on Thursday. “I’ve never been there, but I’ve seen it on TV and I’ve seen how loud it gets so we’re going to have to bring the same intensity, if not more, that we brought for Villanova. They’re a very physical and talented team, and they’re playing at home, so that’s pretty dangerous if you don’t bring your A-game.”

That sums up the task for Rutgers, which will look to carry the momentum from the 80-68 pasting of No. 18 Villanova. To a man, the Scarlet Knights have said getting that first Big East win after six straight losses was a weight removed from their shoulders.

The Scarlet Knights have shot a lot better the last couple games. Shooting nearly 60% against ‘Nova and over 60% against DePaul. Their problem — and you may have figured it out by the mention of their perimeter players testing Pitt’s defense — they have very little inside presence. Hamady N’Diaye is large inside at 6’11”, but as raw as they come. Even as a sophomore.

DeJuan Blair and Sam Young should be looking for and getting the ball a lot in this game. Young, especially since he has had such a breakout year.

“I want to silence all critics about my game,” Young said. “I work very hard. People don’t see what I do behind closed doors. It’s hard to say how a player is going to be in the future when you don’t know how his work ethic is.”

Young keeps his frustrating 2006-07 season close to him. He wrote an inspirational passage before the first game of the season that he keeps at his home. A copy is posted in his locker. He also has been known to post newspaper articles in his locker that were unflattering.

Such stories were published last season, when Young was having a hard time playing small forward. By late December, Pitt coach Jamie Dixon decided to play Young at power forward exclusively.

This season, Young began the season as Pitt’s starting power forward, but a season-ending injury to starting small forward Mike Cook forced lineup adjustments. Young is the starter at power forward, but he is beginning to see more and more time at small forward.

Hmm. I wonder if any of my posts from last year made it in there.

Not that anyone should be expecting him to go pro after this season.

I just haven’t had time to post about Pitt’s announced non-conference schedule for this season.

Aug. 30: Bowling Green

Sept. 6: Buffalo

Sept. 20: Iowa

Oct. 18: at Navy

Nov. 1: at Notre Dame

As a home schedule, it’s pretty good since there will be conference home games with Louisville, WVU and Rutgers.  No 1-AA teams this year, so that’s nice. I will be curious to see how the Big East schedule is integrated into this, with Pitt having 2 open weeks in September. It will be odd to have at least one off-week in September. Then another one in October or November — I’m assuming the WVU game will be on November 29.

The one thing that bothers me is that Pitt has agreed to a 4-year home-and-home with Buffalo. This was apparently set up by former AD Jeff Long, and that just blows my mind. A 2-for-1, fine. A 3-for-2 I could have stomached. That’s horrible. Unless this includes maybe 2 or 3 more home-only MAC games, I’m just stunned.

Still, it could be worse. It looks like nearly 1/3 of the ACC will have two 1-AA games on their schedule this year — FSU, GT, Clemson and probably VT. Yeah, I don’t think any schedule bashing should ever come from the ACC again.

So, how likely is Levance Fields’ targeted return date of mid-February?

Was asking around a bit about Pitt PG Levance Fields’ injury, and was told that coming back six weeks after surgery on a metatarsal is completely plausible, provided that the player has little pain in his foot. That will be the key to Fields’ early return — how bad his foot hurts.

Here’s a bet that he’ll come back just a bit too early and play with tremendous pain, which will limit his minutes. Here’s also a bet that he’ll be 100 percent healthy before the Big East Tournament.

An article stressing how depth may be key this year for the top teams in March. Pitt gets prominent mention of the worst case scenario.

Pitt is still in the ESPN Power Rankings at #13.

Of all the things that make no sense in the Big East, the Panthers might be the biggest enigma. There is no reason Pittsburgh should be in the national picture, not with more suits than unis on the bench to choose from. Yet here they are, losing to Cincinnati on the road by only three and thumping St. John?s. If the patch-worked Panthers can hold it together until Levance Fields returns, they could be the toughest out come March.

Pitt is also still in Luke Winn’s SI.com Power Rankings, and actually moved up another spot to #14.

This just in, Sam Young is hot this season.

Sam Young is riding a scoring streak unmatched by any Pitt player this decade, despite playing a lot of minutes at a new position.

Young, seeing more time at small forward, has scored at least 20 points in four of the Panthers’ past five games. No Pitt player since Ben Howland arrived in 1999-2000 can claim such a consistent, prolonged scoring run.

“I feel everybody has a weakness,” said Young, averaging 21.8 points in the past five games, “and if they do have one, I will exploit it.”

Just, please, stay healthy.
Kind of a strange chat with Ray Fittipaldo. Speculating more on Fields’ return and Pitt’s conference record at that point, a little about Wanamaker, and dissing D.J. Kennedy.

If you had watched College Gamenight on ESPN, you know that they are celebrating the 20th anniversary of  “Send it in Jerome!” Article in the P-G about it.  This part was absolutely fascinating to me.

But the Big East regular-season champions had a disappointing loss to Villanova in a Big East tournament semifinal and a heartbreaking loss to Vanderbilt in the second round of the NCAA tournament. The NCAA game is known in Pittsburgh as “the Barry Goheen game.”

Goheen made a desperation 3-pointer in the final seconds to force overtime, denying Pitt a spot in the Sweet 16. Goheen was the hero, but Lane blames former Pitt coach Paul Evans for the loss.

“We never should have let them shoot a 3,” Lane said, “Why not foul like John Calipari said? John Calipari said that in the huddle, and [Evans] told him to be quiet. Why not let them shoot free throws? We’re up by three, and you’ve got the greatest rebounder in the game under the hoop to get the rebound.”

Here’s why that is so fascinating to me. Sean Miller, of course, was on that squad. Fast forward 19 years and he’s the head coach of Xavier playing Ohio State in the NCAA Tournament. Up by 3 with Ohio State trying to tie in the waning seconds.  Miller didn’t have his players foul before the shot. Ohio State of course tied and then won in OT.

Miller was second guessed a lot after that game for the decision. Never quite dawned on me that he had history repeat itself on him.

The Pittsburgh papers were — naturally — all about Sam Young.

“I knew I had to step it up a little bit,” Young said.

Young was 7 of 10 from the field in the second half. Pitt shot 61.5 percent in the second half and forced St. John’s into 16 turnovers for the game. As Young heated up, he basically took over the game.

“People don’t realize, Sam does all that on his own,” Benjamin said. “Coach Dixon could be screaming ‘bring it out,’ but Sam gets so hot sometimes, you have to let him do that. That’s what you call a player in the zone. As you could see, the kid from St. John’s (Mason) got in the zone. When Sam gets in the zone like that, there’s really not too much you can say to him, besides nothing. Just let him be him.”

The Pitt players were happy to get that win over St. John’s in NYC.

“The last few times we’ve come up here we’ve lost,” junior forward Sam Young said. “I’ve been telling our guys that for the last three or four days leading up to the game. People were saying, ‘Well, St. John’s isn’t any good this year.’ But I said, ‘They keep beating us. They always give us a run for our money.’ ”

…

It was a satisfying win for the home-grown Panthers, who had three players competing who grew up in New York.

“We never beat them up here in my four years here,” Benjamin said. “We like getting payback on people. We think this is a home court for us. We’ve played so many games here during the Big East tournament over the years. It’s so basic for us to be here and be comfortable.”

For St. John’s, there isn’t a lot to be happy.

St. John’s, a loser of four straight and six of seven, was no match for the hobbled Panthers at Madison Square Garden. Despite having only eight scholarship players available, No. 13 Pittsburgh came away with an 81-57 victory. The crowd was only 5,219, which included a small student section that spent much of the game jeering the home team.

“Teams right now are out-toughing us,” the St. John’s freshman Malik Boothe said. “We have to get back into the gym and get tougher.”

This could be the doom for St. John’s Coach Norm Roberts. As much as he has been trying to rebuild after Mike Jarvis wrecked the place, patience is wearing thin.

It has stood for every minute of every game, cheering through losses. They have ridden opponents, and despite their numbers, tried to make the Garden and Carnesecca Arena inhospitable. But even the St. John’s student section – the Red Storm’s most loyal fans – is getting fed up.

St. John’s coach Norm Roberts has said the freshman-laden Red Storm would take its lumps, and pleaded for patience. His overtures were met last night with calls for his job from the student body before even the first half was complete in last night’s 81-57 Big East loss to No. 13 Pittsburgh before just 5,219 at the Garden.

There was still 3:21 left before the break and the Panthers, who were without injured starters Mike Cook and Levance Fields, held a 33-20 lead when the student body began to chant “Fire Norm!”

Maybe there’s something about the Garden that makes a fan want to call for the home team coach’s head.

“I chose the path we are on,” Roberts said. “I chose to bring in eight freshmen. I chose to do that for our program (to) build a foundation. We have to take our lumps in order to be good. We are playing against quality – not good teams but great teams.”

The problem for Roberts is that after having to start over, that first group is almost all gone. The number of transfers and players quitting put him in the position where he ended up with a large, promising recruiting class. The problem is that there are eight freshmen scholarship players. Eight. There is one senior and two juniors on scholarship. That’s it.

As much as everyone clamors for the next thing. The younger player with the potential and upside, that many at once on a team is going to really struggle. As Roberts said, though, that was his call to do that. Sadly, it seems increasingly likely that the next coach of St. John’s will be the one to benefit from this decision.

Why? Worse than the losing the people aren’t showing up for the game except to heckle.

Inside the arena St. John’s helped make famous, before 14,544 empty seats, the Red Storm took another uncertain step into its second century of men’s basketball.

Although the program has suffered more painful defeats in a mostly glorious history, few losses have presented a sadder spectacle than the emotional brownout seen at Madison Square Garden last night. To be fully comprehensive, the final score should be three-sided: Pittsburgh 81-Anthony Mason Jr. 29-St. John’s teammates 28.

…

“This is probably the least amount of people I’ve ever played in front of here,” said Keith Benjamin, Pitt’s senior guard from Mount Vernon. “Still, the Garden gets you hyped just to have one person in the crowd.”

The fans were apathetic at the start, and several in the student section called for Roberts’ head as St. John’s fell behind late in the first half.

“When it started to slip away,” said Boothe, whose bounce passes consistently eluded teammates, “I felt the crowd kind of turned on us. Everyone’s getting tired of losing. It’s just the lumps we’re going to have to take to get better.”

Good luck with that.

That was a satisfying win. 81-57. The most points Pitt has scored on the road this season.
Pitt went full scrubs in the final 2 minutes. Frye had a 3, the Red Storm weren’t able to bring down from a complete and utter blowout.

It was a slow and steady blowout in the game. Pitt would build a lead, St. John’s would make a little run, then Pitt would make a bigger run to take a bigger lead. That repeated itself multiple times until Pitt was up by as much as 26 and it was time to clear the bench.

St. John’s was the team that had a key player get in early foul trouble, as Justin Burrell got in early foul trouble. It was great because he tried to get Blair an early foul in the first 2 minutes. He purposefully ran into him and seemed to roll over his back. Instead, he got whistled.

Early in the game, Pitt attacked the basket. They knew the Red Storm lacked an inside presence, so that was where they were attacking. It really opened things up. It also meant Pitt didn’t just draw fouls, but shooting fouls.
While the Red Storm didn’t try and go full-court press, they did put a man on Ramon to try and pressure and slow him the entire way up the court — Ramon handled it well.

Scary sight 5 minutes into the game — Tyrell Biggs and Gary McGhee on the court together. Awkward doesn’t begin to describe it.

Gilbert Brown had a solid first half offensively. He hit a three, drove to the basket and just looked confident. He knew he could beat his man.

Anthony Mason, Jr. played an outstanding game. He was the only thing keeping the Red Storm in the game. In the first half, he went 6-7 and made the Red Storm’s only 3-point basket. The rest of their team shot 6-17. He wasn’t quite so hot in the second half, “only” shooting 6-10 and finishing with 29 points as he did everything he could to keep his team in it. The rest of his teammates could only add 28 points.

Of course, Pitt had more than enough of an answer, but Sam Young seemed to match him the entire second half. Young went for 26 and looked outstanding.

You can complain that Pitt didn’t stop Mason, but he was hot. His shots were falling and he is a very good player. I can’t really complain about the defense unless you think Pitt should have done something dirty to try and stop him. Same thing with Young. Sam was feeling it and attacking especially in the second half. St. John’s had little answer.

The funniest sequence in the game involved Biggs early in the second half. At about 15:45, he gets the ball just past the free throw line. He clears out the defender as he sweeps with the ball. Both teams freeze as the St. John’s player goes down. Everyone is expecting an offensive foul called — especially Biggs. Nothing. Biggs, almost shrugs as he realizes there’s no call, and no one is coming to defend him. He takes and makes the short jumper. The play-calling crew couldn’t even contain their laughter at that.

Pitt completely controlled the second half. They shot nearly 60% in the second half. Ronald Ramon had another great game — 16 points, 5 assists, 5 rebounds and 1 turnover.
A solid and important win for Pitt as Pitt goes to 4-2 in conference, and gets to 2-2 in BE road games.

Offline world duties keeps me from liveblogging tonight’s game. I’ll be back later with thoughts afterwards.

Never got to the Starkey piece on Mike Cook learning about how much he matters to his teammates and family.

“People really care for me,” he said. “That’s the biggest thing with this: You know who’s really there for you.”

Start with coach Jamie Dixon. He didn’t just monitor the situation when Cook went down. He knelt beside Cook, holding his hand, as Cook writhed in pain.

“I’ll never forget that about Coach Dixon,” Cook said. “That meant a lot to me and my family. I remember I looked up and saw him for a second. I saw his face. He really felt for me.”

…

Several of Cook’s relatives and friends were at the Garden that night. His girlfriend, Julie Henley, boarded a bus from her hometown of Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. She was there to greet Cook the next night when he arrived home. She has yet to return to Philly.

Fields is there every day, too. He sustained a broken foot in Pitt’s next game, so he and Cook rehab together. Fields’ quick wit keeps Cook smiling.

Cook’s father, stepmother and younger brother live right around the corner. They moved from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh when Cook transferred from East Carolina after his sophomore year.

Cook’s brother, William, is a ninth-grader at Schenley High. Their father, Michael, is a Navy veteran with diabetes, so living near the VA hospital is perfect.

That’s some strong family support.

From the Fields injury, he doesn’t blame the cheerleader he tripped over.

As for the Dayton cheerleaders who caused the injury, Fields has no problems with the dancers’ proximity to the court. He said it was a fluke accident.

“I don’t think they need to be (farther back),” Fields said. “They are just fine. This doesn’t usually happen, but of course in my instance, I probably should say they should move back a little bit.”

This article on Benjamin breaking through in terms of his shooting and overall play has a last bit that I liked.

“As of right now, I’m out there having fun and playing the game,” he said. “If there’s an opening, I’m going to try to take it and just be aggressive with my situation. Everybody always says the senior season at Pitt always comes up short. I’m not looking to have that. We want to make every season better than the next.

“As a senior, you always want to leave your program better than it was when you came here. That’s what me, Ron and Mike are trying to do. We want to make Pitt a better program.”

That has been something of a common theme each year with the seniors and it’s a credit to Coach Dixon for having the players understand and appreciate it. They are making Pitt better each year and building towards something bigger. From Krasuer to Gray and Graves and this year Ramon and Benjamin, they have all talked about how they are leaving Pitt in better shape and a better program. And it’s true. They may not get to be playing when the next breakthrough happens, but they were vital in helping the team and program getting closer to that point.

Defensive End Dan Vaughan out of Central Catholic gave a tepid verbal to Syracuse. Not because he wanted to, but because his options were limited.

Vaughan, had offers from Syracuse, Pitt and Stanford, but Pitt and Stanford pulled them.

“For now, I had to commit to Syracuse because of the scholarship,” Vaughan said. “They are running out of scholarships because they got other recruits. What’s happening now is apparently (Pitt) is trying to give me another scholarship. If that were to happen then I would decommit from Syracuse and take Pitt.”

Pitt rescinded Vaughan’s offer the day after his official visit last weekend. Vaughan said he hopes to know if he’ll have another offer from Pitt by Thursday when Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt meets with Central Catholic coach Terry Totten.

Vaughan had an offer on his official visit, but didn’t decide then. The day after the visit, Pitt pulled it.

The whole thing amuses the hell out of me. It points to some of the silliness of recruiting. The kid decided to take one extra day. Maybe to talk a bit more with his family. Weigh the choices and perhaps be responsible about this decision. Now he’s only got one choice.

Yet, he can wait and see about another one opening up while tying up an Orange scholarship. Perhaps even waiting until at some point on NLI Day to find out where to fax his paperwork.

The NYC media finds its two themes for the game tomorrow.

There is the previously discussed: Blair and Kennedy are close friends and played together at Schenley.

Then there is the Pitt has battled injuries, but keeps winning.

After losing two more players who play minor roles, and the Panthers’ roster reads like a sign-up sheet in the emergency room. Yet Pittsburgh has pushed ahead behind Dixon’s optimism and his mantra of no excuses, even though the extenuating circumstances are plentiful.

“Even when guys went down, he believed,” Ramon said of Dixon. “He believed in guys who hadn’t done this before. He kept teaching and put his trust out there and believed in us even more. He didn’t say we’d just do the best we can.”

There have been adjustments, which only add to the tale.

The team’s practices have become more finesse than physical, with the fear of losing another player being far too real. Dixon even had to bring aboard a Division II transfer, Ryan Tiesi, who scored 4.2 points a game for Bellarmine University last season, just to have enough bodies to practice effectively.

Dixon said that other coaches, friends of his, told him that he might as well forget about the rest of the season. “But I had seen our guys in practice and knew we had answers,” Dixon said. “You have to go with your heart. I felt we had the players to make it work.”

Pitt does need a road win. Beating USF hardly counts, and no one wants to lose two in a row.

Pitt, stinging from a 62-59 loss at Cincinnati, is 1-2 on the road in Big East games. The Panthers will need a victory at St. John’s to avoid losing two games in a row for only the sixth time under Dixon, spanning 153 games.

“This is a great time to show people that we can win on the road,” said Benjamin, averaging 16.0 points per game since moving into the starting lineup for injured Levance Fields. “You have to win games on the road and this is a good time to win one.”

Also, schedule and record-wise, this and the Rutgers games are must wins. Pitt is heading for a brutal second half — ‘Nova, @UConn, WVU, Providence, @Marquette, @ND, L-ville, Cinci, @Syr and @WVU. Even at full strength it wouldn’t have been outrageous for Pitt to lose 3 or 4 of those games.

I’ve had this in my bookmarks since back in late December and I’m finally getting around to it now. What is this map with seemingly random markers on it? It’s the locations of Pitt football’s away football games since 1998. MapGameDay.com posted maps for all of the FBS teams and made them sortable by teams and conferences. The Wizard of Odds then compiled all of the data and made fancy graphs from that.

According to this, the farthest we’ve traveled in each compass direction.

North: @ Syracuse (’98, ’00, ’02, ’04, ’06) in Syracuse, NY
South: @ Miami (’98, ’00, ’02) in Miami, FL
East: @ Boston College (’99, ’01, ’03) in Chestnut Hill, MA
West: @ Nebraska (’05) in Lincoln, NE

Our amount of travel compared to other Big East teams?

And as a whole, the Big East travels less than every other conference except the ACC and SEC. Of course, the fact we only have 8 teams in our conference might lead to that.

Tony Wise, now a former New York Jets employee, was the favorite and front-runner to get the offensive line coaching job. He’s coached with Dave Wannstedt in the past, and today he was hired.

“Tony Wise brings to Pitt an outstanding record of teaching offensive line play at the highest level,” Wannstedt said. “We started our coaching careers at Pitt together, and I was always continually impressed by both his coaching style and teaching ability. I know he is going to be an immediate asset for our players on and off the field.”

Obviously as a coach, he knows what to do to get players to be successful in the NFL. He coached for so long in the pros that he knows what the good players have and can teach it to his linemen at Pitt. Not only is it good for current players but it should help attract new recruits in the future.

He’s saying all the right things and appears to be enthusiastic about returning to Pitt and the college game. I’m already expecting better results than those of Paul Dunn.

I was kind of amused by the theme in both papers the other day. You know, how DeJuan Blair is the most indispensable Pitt player.

The argument can be made that Pitt’s most indispensable player is not Fields, leading scorer Sam Young or any of the other upperclassmen on the team. It could be argued — and quite convincingly — that the Panthers’ most important player is a freshman.

Pitt has lost three games this season. In two of them, first-year center DeJuan Blair was mired in foul trouble and rendered ineffective.

Blair had the worst game of his college career in a 62-59 loss at Cincinnati Saturday afternoon. He scored four points and tied a season-low with three rebounds against the Bearcats. He posted such paltry statistics because he played just 22 minutes because of foul trouble.

Blair had to sit on the bench for 14 minutes in the first half after picking up two early fouls. He picked up his third a little more than a minute into the second half.

Obviously the main theme was that when he’s in foul trouble, Pitt has increased struggles.

“It’s hard to do well without him,” junior Sam Young said. “We are already short-handed.”

Young summarizes it all, in my view. If Pitt is without any of the present starting five for an extended period in the game, the team will struggle. It’s the lack of depth, stupid. The three scholarship bench players are Bradley Wanamaker, Gary McGhee and Tyrell Biggs. That should tell us everything about how vital all the starters are right now to Pitt’s chances in any game. It’s nice to make a piece on Blair, but “most important,” just overstates it.

The point they almost lose in both stories is that as a freshman starting, playing and thriving inside — Blair is going to be a focal point of any game plan by opponents. One of the main goals will be to get him in foul trouble to get him out of the game. It takes away Pitt’s leading rebounder and a vital defender and scoring threat. Plus, it further wears on Pitt’s lack of depth. Obviously he will improve and get better as he gets more experience. Not to mention as he plays longer, the refs will give him more of a break on some calls that a freshman simply won’t get.

Sticking with Blair, a big theme going into tomorrow night’s game at St. John’s is that his HS teammate and best friend D.J. Kennedy will be starting on the Red Storm.

The Panthers recruited Kennedy, but he said the style of play and the chance for playing time were better at St. John’s. At Pitt, he would have been at the same position as redshirt freshman Gilbert Brown and incoming freshman Brad Wanamaker.

“Early on, me and DeJuan talked about going to the same school,” Kennedy said. “But things happen for a reason. …I’m definitely happy at St. John’s. I love the coaching staff at Pitt. It was just the situation. I felt St. John’s gave me a better opportunity.”

Kennedy also seemed to want to get out of Pittsburgh. There has been much tragedy and violence that impacted his family and friends that he, quite reasonably, seemed to be desperate to get somewhere else.

Blair does wish that he and Kennedy were still teammates, but then I’m not sure he would have ended up at Pitt so selfishly I’m happy it didn’t.

“I wish he would have thought about it more,” Blair said. “We should have taken it more seriously to go to college together. We weren’t thinking that way. We could have gone to Pitt, West Virginia, Kansas State. I could have gone anywhere he went. We weren’t thinking ahead like we should have been.

“We could have brought what we had at Schenley to Pitt. But I guess he wanted to set a new trend. He wanted to get out of the city. That’s cool. I told him I was behind him 100 percent whatever he did. He’s starting and playing very well. I’m happy for him. He didn’t have to stay home.”

Pitt hasn’t beaten St. John’s in NYC in 12 years. No matter how bad they’ve been, Pitt has just struggled miserably against them on the road.

Jeff Otah apparently is getting a lot of interest.

ESPN.com’s Todd McShay has left tackles Sam Baker (Southern Cal) and Jeff Otah (Pitt) going 20th and 23rd, respectively, in his mock draft, but Mayock said either might be available when the Dolphins pick first in Round 2.

Now I don’t know who actually watched the East-West game — aside from NFL scouts — but Joe Clermond apparently had a good showing.

Three front-office men independently mentioned Pittsburgh’s Joe Clermond as a player who helped himself. Clermond played as a down end for Dave Wannstedt, but several NFL teams wanted to see if he could play outside linebacker in a 3-4. The early results were encouraging.

Plenty of time for them to rise and fall on mock drafts.

I don’t know where else he’s going to look, and I don’t know if he simply decided the numbers weren’t favorable for getting out on the field. Still A.J. Alexander has decided to keep looking some more.

The Panthers didn’t expect their coaching staff changes to have an adverse effect on recruiting, but Alexander had second thoughts after wide receivers coach Aubrey Hill left Friday for the same job at Miami.

Hill wasn’t the primary recruiter for the 5-foot-10, 180-pound Alexander, but he was expected to be his position coach. When Alexander told Pitt coaches he was considering visiting other schools, they warned him that his scholarship offer would be withdrawn if he did.

Pitt already has three receiver recruits in Aliquippa U.S. Army All-American Jonathan Baldwin, Gateway’s Cameron Saddler and Norwin’s Mike Shanahan, and the Panthers also are recruiting Muhlenberg’s Vaughn Carraway.

Keep in mind, that the offer was withdrawn, to Mike Cruz as well. They continued to recruit him and he eventually verballed.
I take the withdrawal to mean Pitt isn’t promising to hold his offer — not that they won’t be willing to accept him unless they get other verbals before he makes up his mind.

This was passed on to me, and while I trust the source — I trust little in the recruiting game. So, let’s not overreact but wait and see.

The report is that A.J. Alexander out of Altoona has re-re-opened his recruiting with Aubrey Hill choosing to take the Miami Hurricanes WR Coach position. That’s a little surprising since his verbal had him singling out Assistant Coach Greg Gattuso.
Keep in mind that Alexander initially gave his verbal to Florida State. It could be that he has just decided to rethink again.

Or it could be a false-positive type situation. Where rumors, reports and overly-parsed words lead to conjecture and suddenly it becomes conclusory.

So, please hold off on the overreactions and let’s see how this plays out.