Back to the fun stuff.

Power polls from the various sports sites. Unanimity, for this week at least, is good.

Luke Winn at SI.com:

These Power Rankings begin with an exclusive What-If Scenario: In the course of reporting the James Harden feature that’s in this week’s SI, I stumbled across a Pitt story: Arizona State assistant Scott Pera — the former Artesia High coach whom Harden followed to Tempe — told me he had discussions with Pitt’s Jamie Dixon about job opportunities in the spring of 2006. The Sun Devils made the first move on Pera in late May, and he left Artesia to become their director of basketball operations. The first day Pera was starting work at ASU, Dixon called him to say, “I’m ready to move now [and offer you a job].” Pera, who grew up in Hershey, Pa., might have accepted that offer had it come much earlier. He said that he wasn’t sure if Harden, an L.A. kid, would have been willing to make the same cross-country jump. “You should ask James that,” Pera said. “I’d be interested to hear what he says.” So I asked Harden. And he said, “Yeah, I would have gone [to Pitt]. That’s a great program, coach Dixon is a great coach, and that would have been a good opportunity for me, too. I didn’t want to stay in L.A.” Pitt fans, could you imagine having a starting lineup of Levance Fields, Harden, Sam Young, DeJuan Blair and Tyrell Biggs?

And Pitt fans are accused of never being satisified.

ESPN.com had Pitt ranked at the top. Two of their ten voting analysts kept UNC at #1. Jay Bilas was one of them, I think everyone and their dog knows who the other was — but he swears no malice (Insider subs).

FoxSports doesn’t grasp permalinks in their power rankings. So, this will change over time. Still, for now.

The good: The Panthers are enjoying their first No. 1 ranking in school history after thumping Big East rival Georgetown on its home floor with a double-digit win. The bad: Pitt proved with its win over the Hoyas that it can play with the big boys despite a soft non-conference schedule, but things get tough later this month with road games at Louisville, West Virginia and Villanova.

Finally, it is time for some hardcore number crunching. John Gasaway at Basketball Prospectus has sung the praises of their offensive performance. Now he hits on game planning against Pitt.

With all this talent and all these skills, the game plan for any Pitt opponent is two-fold: force the Panthers to shoot threes and keep Blair (and his teammates) off the offensive glass. The dilemma posed by Pitt, of course, is that the best way to accomplish the former objective, a zone, inhibits accomplishing the second goal.

Or does it? Consider Syracuse last year. The Orangemen have long been synonymous with the term “zone defense.” Yet somehow way back in 2008 Jim Boeheim’s team managed to combine zone D with excellent defensive rebounding. Future Pitt opponents, take heart! True, it didn’t work out so well for Georgetown but maybe you can have your zone and your boards too. The ‘Cuse did it last year with strength in numbers: Donte Greene, Arinze Onuaku and Paul Harris, in particular. Other Big East teams might try to do the same, given the Panthers’ iffy perimeter shooting. So far this season Pitt has made exactly one in every three of its attempts from beyond the arc.

…

Is Pitt the best team in the country? A better question might be: who are the best teams? Carolina may have lost at home to Boston College but the Tar Heels will rise again. (After all, last year the Final Four-bound Heels lost at home to a team, Maryland, that didn’t even make the NCAA tournament.) As for Pitt, well, clearly they’ve already risen. Until further notice the best teams in the country include, at a minimum, UNC and the Panthers, warts and all.

And right now, that is all you want to be. Considered one of the best teams. No one wins anything now.

These are just my opinions. Don’t take them as the gospel or as heresy.

That McCoy is going really doesn’t surprise me. I know what he said, but plenty — like Larry Fitzgerald — have said similar in the past. No one should have been surprised.

El_Diablo: Colt McCoy and Michael Crabtree have announced they are returning next year as has another Heisman trophy hopeful , shady McCoy. When are you and your buddy bendel knock off the Shady will change his mind mantra.He loves Pitt, He loves Wanny and he loves the college life. Why is this so hard for you media guys to accept?

Paul Zeise: I’ll say it one more time — when his own coach has reservations about it, why shouldn’t we? I hope the kid comes back- it will make a more interesting team to cover that’s for sure. But again, when his own coach is telling people to hold off before they declare him back and when people around the program are still not completely sold, the responsible thing as a “media guy and a media guy buddy” is to report the fact that it is a long way between now and declaration day. We don’t make up stories, we don’t guess at things, we report what we know as has been told to us by people in the know. That’s what we do here.

Donald Brown told everyone he was coming back to UConn, but as soon as the International Bowl was over he admitted that he lied. I don’t think McCoy had his mind made up, and was necessarily lying. He was just trying to end speculation while the season was still happening. It’s what college players do, the same way college coaches try to deny interest in another job.

Now, I have to admit, that McCoy’s departure has me worried about the prospects for Pitt for next year. I know there’s a lot of optimism and enthusiasm for Chris Burns and even Shariff Harris. I know there a slew of other running backs coming in this recruiting class. McCoy, though, was a special player at the position and it isn’t some plug-and-play simplicity. McCoy accounted for 1793 yards (1488 rushing, 305 receiving) and 21 TDs. The rest of the offense produced 2659 total yards and 18 TDs.

Beyond that, the entire backfield is being replaced with Stephens-Howling and Collins both graduating. Whether you are of the opinion that the talent that will take over for them is superior or not, it also has to be acknowledged that Coach Wannstedt is not a big fan of inexperience and will be looking for ways to ease the players into the spots.

That may mean, gulp, actually trying to use the passing game. The place where the veterans and experience is located. Anyone feeling really confident about that, beyond falling back on — “well, it can’t get much worse”? From the subpar QB play to less than impressive route running by the receivers.

Beyond that, it can’t be glossed over that the O-line remains a big question mark. The team’s best lineman, C.J. Davis is gone. How well will Robb Houser come back from his leg injury and exactly who is going to be the back-up center? So far, there has been a distinct and noticeable inability to develop a center from the recruited offensive linemen. Jason Pinkston has not finished a season healthy yet and both times with the shoulders. How good the O-line is or can be is a huge unknown.

Then it comes to Offensive Coordinator Matt Cavanaugh. Whether it’s calling the game or developing QBs.

It keeps coming round to the chicken-egg thing with QB development. The supporters say he’s never had much to work with. Whether it was Chris Redmond and Kyle Boller with the Ravens or Stull, Bostick, Smith and Cross at Pitt. Detractors point to the fact that there was little improvement even with that material and he played a role at both spots in helping to evaluate the players to draft or recruit.

I’ve found myself increasingly siding with the detractors on Cavanaugh. He’s fine with QBs that all ready know what they are doing, but there aren’t any of those veterans available to him at Pitt. Palko graduated a couple years ago. I think he knows much about offense and what should be done. He does not do a good job teaching it. When it comes to calling the offense, he just doesn’t seem to have any feel for the game or what the players are or can do. There’s an absurd level of inconsistency.

We were very lucky to have McCoy, and have him healthy the entire time. That is just not easily replaced.