I really think this is a sign of how far Pitt basketball has advanced in this decade that every little recruiting note hardly seems worth reporting breathlessly. Pitt gets name-dropped by recruits more and more as a way to show that he is a high-major recruit.

So, what’s going on? Shooting guard Deandre Kane, late of Schenley is heading down to North Carolina. For prep school.

Former Schenley basketball star Deandre Kane has decided to attend Patterson School, a prep school in Lenoir, N.C. A few weeks ago, Kane had said he would attend New Hampton, a prep school in New Hampshire. But he decided Patterson was a better fit for him.

Patterson has one of the top prep school basketball programs in the country. Coach Chris Chaney has produced more than 100 Division I college players and eight NBA draft picks. Three years ago, six Patterson players signed with Division I colleges and three of them went to Oklahoma, Memphis and Arizona.

“Pitt and Jamie Dixon really helped out a lot in getting Deandre to Patterson,” said Kane’s father, Calvin.

Part of the reason may have had something to do with the costs. Either way, if Kane can finally get his academics in order, Pitt has to be the prohibitive favorite.

Pitt was supposed to have a couple players visit last weekend during the Buffalo game. Only J.J. RIchardson from Texas made it.

The 6’7″ 235 pound Richardson visited the Pitt campus this past weekend and came away very impressed.

“I loved it,” says Richardson. “The players were all very nice and they brought me in to everything they were doing. They’re definitely number one right now. I almost committed, and I really thought about it, but I wanted to have someplace to compare it to first.”

That someplace will be Oklahoma State, where the strong and athletic sleeper will visit this weekend.

In other Pitt news, 6’8″ power forward James Padgett, of Abraham Lincoln HS in Brooklyn, was expected to visit at the same time as Richardson, but schoolwork prevented him from making the trip. He is expected to visit on the weekend of September 19th, along with 6’9″ power forward Dante Taylor and 6’4″ wing Lamar Patterson, both of whom have verbally committed, as well as other ’09 prospects (possibly Durand Scott and Talib Zanna, to name two) and ’10 prospects yet to be finalized.

That’s a heck of a good reason to be there for the Iowa game and be loud. Oh, and the Pitt basketball team will be honored for winning the Big East Tournament at the game. Coach Dixon visited Padgett last week, so you know they would like to add him.

Tom Droney at the Sewickley  Academy visited ND, but still loves Pitt.

I don’t know what to make of the recruitment of Dominic Cheek. A top-flight, shooting guard  has been the target of every major program. I’m sure Pitt is recruiting him hard, but with Kansas, Memphis, UConn and Indiana among the others on his list, it seems like a long shot. Yet, Pitt keeps popping up on his list. Even as his position wasn’t a priority for the 2009 recruiting class. We’ll see.

Amidst the future recruiting names for 2011, here are a couple of profiles of players Pitt has already been pursuing from Virginia. Matt Gorski is a Center from Richmond Virginia and Mike Gbinije, a guard/forward.

Have to make up for lost time. I spent yesterday on a marathon college football liveblog session. Today it was an attempt to make it up to the wife for letting me sit on the couch watching football, drinking beer and blogging. All while she had to deal with the kids with no help from me — heck, I even sent her out to pick up dinner. She is a saint.

Worth noting that the Mountain West went 4-0 versus the Pac-10 in one day. Oregon lost its starting QB — probably for the season. Washington St. and Washington look like they could give Syracuse a challenge for worst BCS conference programs.

The Big 10, well Ohio State’s shellacking along with Michigan and Purdue losing really overshadows anything else in the conference.

The ACC acquitted itself rather well with Maryland, UNC and Duke getting wins with some worthiness of respect.

Heck if you watched the SEC conference games between Georgia and South Carolina (14-7) and Auburn and Miss. St. (3-2) you came away disgusted. Remember a few years back when Big 11 partisans would rationalize that the conference just beat each other up.

The thing that I’m seeing in terms of conferences, is it is all about the QB. It has something to do with the spread offense to be sure. It just makes the QB that much more important and even more than ever, the key to a team. The Big 12 is actually standing out, and there is no conference that has more really, really good college QBs. Bradford, Daniel, McCoy, Reesing, Ganz and Harrell are all excellent QBs. 50% of the conference. Now take a look at every other conference. The SEC is second with Tebow, Stafford, Snead and a few functional QBs at LSU, Alabama and Arkansas –but no one you want to count on in a crunch time.

Yeah, overall, I’m thinking this is not a good year for college football in terms of overall quality.