Pitt didn’t have much to worry about yesterday, but it was a busy day regarding the final decisions of lots of underclassmen regarding the NBA Draft. Kept me busy over at FanHouse. Something I’ve learned after yesterday is that the one-and-done rule hardly stemmed the flow of freshmen and sophomores to the NBA as optimistically thought last year. Last year there were 8 freshmen and 5 sophomores in the NBA Draft. This year, it is 14 and 10. A couple late returns to college kept it from being higher. This includes a rather old freshman from Lincoln University — JuJuan Robinson who is 24 and was with Providence back in 2004.

What that means is it triggers the latest in pre-pre-season polls. Just the thing to fill in the blanks. Almost universally, you can expect UNC to be given advanced #1 billing.

Andy Katz got things going with his latest, he keeps Pitt at #2.

he hint of Mike Cook coming back for a sixth year (after tearing his ACL in December) makes the Panthers even more formidable. Sam Young and DeJuan Blair are big-time bigs, and Levance Fields might be as good a floor leader as anyone in the country. This Pitt team could win the national title.

Of course, getting through the Big East will be a big challenge this coming season. Katz has ND and Louisville at Nos. 4 and 5. That’s 3 Big East teams in his top-5. All with legit claims on the top of the Big East. Then there’s UConn, WVU, and even Villanova and Marquette. Syracuse, Georgetown and Cinci will all be tough teams. All told, he put 7 BE teams in the top-20.

That said, with UNC as the top pre-pre-season team and arguably the ACC not losing a lot of underclassmen (like the Big East) there will be plenty of East Coast arguing over which conference is superior in the coming year. Look at just the freshmen and sophomore entry lists. It’s predominantly from the Big 12 (5 players) and Pac-10 (8 players).