Tabs piling. Week or longer. Time for a link-dump.

The Sports Illustrated Big East and top-25 preview was more than a week ago. They pick Pitt to win the conference, going 6-1 in the Big East and 4-1 in the non-con.

Here’s their co-branded preview with Athlon of Pitt at #16.

However, in order to reach that lofty goal, Wannstedt understands that Pittsburgh must first win the Big East Conference title, which has eluded him since his arrival in 2005. After corralling the top recruiting classes in the Big East in four of the past five seasons, this Pittsburgh squad is loaded with talent. A national title will be challenging due to a nonconference schedule featuring an opening trip to Utah, a home game against Miami and a visit to Notre Dame, but the Panthers should finally become the Beasts of the Big East.

Finishing the SI.com stuff, they have a good piece on Greg Romeus. It draws the parallel with his development to a potential 1st round pick with Pitt’s high expectations this year. Right now, I’d just be happy if I knew the true situation with Romeus and his “back spasms.”

Brian Grummell at FanHouse has a short primer on the Big East. Spoiler: he still thinks Pitt will win the conference.

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Maybe not intentionally, but there is the Big East football special on ESPNU tonight at 8pm. Most of the ESPN.com attention today, though, is on the basketball side.

It started with ESPN announcing College GameDay Saturday night sites this season. The good news, Pitt plays on one of those games. The bad news is it will be at Villanova in the Pavilion.

Feb. 12: Pittsburgh at Villanova (from the Pavilion), 9 p.m. ET: In Wednesday’s Big East Shootaround, Jay Bilas pegged these two as the top teams in the Big East. Watching this Pennsylvania pair try to separate themselves from the chasing pack — which should include Syracuse, West Virginia and Georgetown — should be about as exciting as you’d imagine.

It is also the only College GameDay Big East appearance (2 each for the SEC, Big 12/10 and Big 10/11/12; 1 for the ACC and 0 for the Pac-10/12). It’s the first appearance for College GameDay at Villanova. That ‘Nova was willing to sacrifice the extra revenue to play in their true home court, would have made this a tough enough game. College GameDay excitement will only make it harder.

As that blurb indicated, the “summer shootaround” moved to the Big East and which team did Jay Bilas peg for #1 in the conference?

1. Pittsburgh: Jamie Dixon has a great program. Not good, but great. Every time you think the Panthers will take a step back, they find a way to win and wow you with high-level consistency and fight. With a young and inexperienced team last year, Pitt seemed to will itself to 25 wins and the best scoring defense in the league. This season, Ashton Gibbs returns with the confidence of a star; Gilbert Brown should have his best year, and was very good on a tour of Ireland; Brad Wannamaker brings toughness and leadership; Gary McGhee brings strength and finishing ability; and Dante Taylor will be far better and more productive. Pitt should have the best team in the Big East when it is all said and done.

Ashton Gibbs was on the list of 10 key players and J.J. Moore for the list of incoming freshmen to watch.

In a companion piece, their resident college basketball blogger Eamonn Brennan looked at the best case/worst case for each team. (He also learned that trying to do this sort of thing for a 16 team conference is draining.)

Best case: The supposedly rebuilding Panthers were a surprise in 2009-10, finishing in a second-place conference tie despite losing a trio of stars from 2008-09’s Elite Eight team. That won’t be the case this year: Pittsburgh returns four starters — breakout guard Ashton Gibbs, backcourt mate Brad Wannamaker and solid forwards Gilbert Brown and Gary McGhee — to a team that should compete for the Big East’s top spot yet again.

Worst case: It’s hard to imagine an experienced and proven Jamie Dixon-coached team taking much of a step back in the coming year. Instead, the danger for the Panthers is that last year’s impressive finish is this team’s peak. No one would scoff at another second-place Big East finish, but Dixon will be looking for this group to make a leap, and while that outcome remains a likelihood, it’s not a stretch of the imagination to think this particular group of Panthers has already topped out.

And the summer of high expectations for Pitt sports continues.

Paul Zeise makes some nice points that the Utah game is not the be-all, end-all game for Pitt. Winning or losing it does not make the season. Even replete with good examples from last year. It’s rational, reasonable and defensible.

It is a non-conference game. Even if Pitt loses, they can still make (and even win) a BCS bowl simply by winning the Big East. Just as Oregon and Ohio State lost their high profile early season non-cons and still went to the Rose Bowl.

You could make a good argument that what everyone ultimately uses to judge the success of the season would be how the team did in the bowl game. Cinci went 12-0 last year, were possibly a few seconds away from the BCS Championship game if Texas QB Colt McCoy’s pass hung a little longer, and lost their head coach before they went to the Sugar Bowl. That didn’t matter, getting pounded by Florida is all people think about with that Cinci team.

There are three major non-con games for Pitt: at Utah, Miami and at Notre Dame. If Pitt were to go 2-1 in those games, I think most Pitt fans would generally prefer the two wins came against Miami and Notre Dame. It isn’t that Utah isn’t as good or as important, it is that there is more history with the other teams and an impulse to want to see Pitt win those other games more.

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I’m  still working out the full details, but I’m coming to NYC for Fashion Day to witness the unveiling of Nike’s new Pro Combat Uniforms for Pitt and those other nine programs on Wednesday, September 1.

Now I’m coming in the day before and with only a couple days before the season opener, it seems only proper to get together with fellow Pitt fans Tuesday night. It seems about time to put some faces to the names of the people who help motivate me to keep this stuff going. Anyone up for it?

Like I said, the details are still being finalized. I know that the hotel where I am supposed to be staying is around Spring and Varick. At the very least recommendations and suggestions on a good place to drink around there would be appreciated.

I’ve barely been home today and yet the tabs seem to have multiplied.

Okay, first off a hat tip to Corey for noting that ESPN.com updated their profile on Malcolm Gilbert. The ESPN.com profile (Insider subs) moved Gilbert up to the #12 center and increased his grade to “94.” Here’s some of the updated profile, and I repeat, that this is almost a blueprint for a Coach Dixon Center project.

Gilbert is a well built center and one of the best interior defenders in the country. He has a great build with a good height, a sturdy frame, wide shoulders, and a long and cut upper body. He is an excellent shot blocker both on and off the ball. …  Gilbert’s defense is far ahead of his offense. He is a bit robotic with his back to the basket as the game can move a little too fast for him at times and in need of a go-to move that he can quickly execute. With a motor that is less than consistent, Gilbert is a good, not great, finisher at the rim.

Gilbert has confidence in his offense, but also admits he needs to improve it.

“Most definitely,” he said. “I have a great touch on my jump shot. I can step out and hit that 10-footer and 15-footer. I’m getting progressively better on the offensive end as far as scoring around the basket. I do think I’ll get progressively better on the offensive end.”

So, it’s in progress.

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There are still puff pieces, profiles, leftovers from training camp to post, but let’s start easing into that Utah game that is closing faster and faster.

The match-ups are of particular interest. Especially where strengths and weaknesses make the coaches have to plan and think. In this case where both teams have match-up issues.

When Pitt is on offense the big concern is straight up the middle of the O-line with the center position (Alex Karabin) and right guard (Greg Gaskins). Left guard as well, is somewhat worrisome. Att least for the first couple games as Chris Jacobson gets settled. There is no concern at the tackle positions with Jason Pinkston and Lucas Nix.

Most of us will be watching the O-line very intently in that first game.

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Malcolm Gilbert has had Pitt’s eye for some time. Over this summer, Gilbert had put Pitt at the top of his list. The 6-11 center apparently decided to join Pitt’s already solid recruiting class.

“Just a great fit for me both athletically and academically — Jamie Dixon is a great coach with great experience and he’ll make me a much better player plus Pitt’s consistency of success makes it a great fit,” said Gilbert on why he committed to the Panthers.

The 6-foot-11 center was one of the top remaining post players in the class. He and his family felt the fit and timing was right for a commitment.

“My family is really in favor of the choice and even though the decision was mine it feels good that we’re all on the same page,” Gilbert said. “It takes a little bit of stress off my shoulders and allows me to focus on my senior year goals both with academics and athletics.”

Gilbert is also an outstanding student that had legitimate interest in, and from, Ivy League schools.

Guess we don’t have to worry about whether he can meet the academic qualifications.

Scout.com and ESPN.com/Scouts, Inc. have him as a verbal to Pitt. Rivals.com does not yet.

He’s considered the #!6 or 17 center prospect in the 2011 class. Both Scout.com and Rivals.com put him as a 3-star recruit, while ESPN.com is a bit higher on him. The ESPN.com profile is a year out of date (Insider subs), but it sure seems to describe a Coach Dixon project center to a “T.”

August, 2009: Gilbert is a post player whose defense is far ahead of his offense at this stage in his career. He has very long arms and good timing which helps him block and change shots. He is not a very good defender on the perimeter at this stage because he does not have incredibly quick feet. Smaller, quicker posts blow by him, but he makes up for it with his length and good timing. When he catches in the post, he uses the spin move to try and score. He also likes to face up and has huge hands that help him catch good and bad passes. He does a good job of passing out of the double team from the post and likes to go over his left shoulder for his turnaround jump shot in the post.

Pitt beat out Wake Forest, Ohio St., Virginia, Clemson and VT for the big man.

The thing about his verbal that will fuel discussion and speculation is that he is Pitt’s 4th verbal for this class. Pitt only has 3 seniors (Gil Brown, Gary McGhee and Brad Wanamaker). That means renewed speculation on who might be transferring after this season or whether one of the 4 incoming recruits may struggle with academic qualifications.

Football stuff that indirectly relates to Pitt and the Big East that are worth noting.

The AP has redesigned their poll page. It’s better, and easier to read individual ballots by voters, but Pollspeak is still the better option because of its versatility. The trump for Pollspeak is the fact that you can see on one webpage how all voters voted in a particular week for a team. That is much easier to figure out which voters hate your team or are clueless homers (I’m looking at you, Eric Hansen of the South Bend Tribune for not ranking Pitt, but putting ND #22).

Relating to the MWC/WAC and BYU stuff from last week, one of the things that came out near the end of the week were talks between the MWC and C-USA.

Two sources with knowledge of the discussions told the Orlando Sentinel on Thursday one of the scenarios being discussed includes a possible merger of 20 teams from the Mountain West Conference and Conference USA, with the champion claiming an automatic BCS bowl bid. However, the sources stated such an agreement is complex, could easily fall apart and is far from being completed.

That would be something interesting. As both conferences also have TV deals that involve CBS media (C-USA on CBS College Sports and WMC’s “Mtn.” channel has CBS as a partner), there could be something to this.

The benefits to C-USA are obvious. Keeps the MWC from raiding their conference for Houston or SMU or Southern Miss. It also gives the conference a shot at BCS bowls. Not a great shot, but far better than they have right now.

The benefit of this alliance for the MWC is less clear, other than to provide some more protection if BYU decides to bolt or TCU gets a call from the Big 12/10 at some point. For the MWC, the benefits may be more long-term.

In case you missed it, this is a fine timeline of Big East expansion rumors in history. And from the Mountain West, well-learned advice on dating Cougars.

There’s a rhythm to training camp media coverage. The first few days is about how the players look, what the coaches are saying, and just general optimism. The players are without pads, and just doing drills.

Then the pads go on and the hitting starts. The reports are about what is happening on the practice field. Injuries, who looks good, bad, moving up the depth chart. How the units are looking.

As always, there are individual stories spaced in there. But at the end of camp. That’s when the individual stories dominate. It is all that is left for a while. There isn’t much more to write about practices. Depth charts are mostly set. It is really about counting down to the first kickoff.

That means most of the stories start focusing on individual players and the soft-focus puff pieces. Let’s hit them quickly.

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Just want to get some of these out, before I try to catch up on the training camp football material that I’ve fallen behind on, yet again.

Mike DeCourcy at the Sporting News (now with a new and even slower loading format) has a piece on Pitt’s now deep frontcourt.

“I think he’s going to play minutes. I think he’s going to be good,” Dixon said.  “I think [Talib] Zanna is going to give us a different look with his length and his size at the 4. It gives us another option.”

Undersized Nasir Robinson started at power forward last season alongside 6-10 center Gary McGhee, and Robinson figures to remain in that position this season.

But Dixon is pleased that Zanna’s emergence and the continued development of 6-7 Texan J.J. Richardson brings a greater degree of size and physicality to the frontcourt and should give the Panthers five players to rotate at the two power positions.

McGhee and 6-10 sophomore Dante Taylor are the team’s centers. Richardson showed last season he can play there, as well.

“I think we’ll end up playing bigger,” Dixon said. “Our big guys played well in Ireland. We saw that happen in practice, too.”

Zanna shot .636 (21-of-33) from the field for the Panthers in the five games overseas and averaged 8 points and 7 rebounds.

Assuming for a moment that Pitt does indeed go big more often, I think the guy that sees his minutes squeezed more than anyone else will be Travon Woodall. He was already going to find minutes a little tougher with Isiah Epps and J.J. Moore pushing for time in the backcourt and to play wing.  Nothing I’ve read regarding the summer league shows that he has gained more consistency with his shooting touch.

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Pitt better meet/exceed expectations early, because the frustration over parking and construction will only make it that much more likely people opt not to turn out for games.

Since this matter is taking over some comment threads, I might as well put it in a post.

Sorry to be late on this matter. I don’t handle the tickets and parking passes in my group, and since I don’t live in the ‘Burgh I did not know about yet another Northside giveaway to the Rooneys. In this case, the huge chunk of parking near Heinz Field for an unnecessary amphitheater. This eliminated some 800 prime Gold parking spots. Amazing ripples across the entire spectrum.

My group has been parking in Green 22 and then Green 23 since 2000. A bit detached from most of the action, but convenient in terms of getting in and out of the Northside. Especially since our group is almost all out-of-towners, and often at least one of us is running late or has to get home with some haste. It was also useful since our seats are on the Allegheny Avenue side.

Now we find ourselves with most of our parking relegated to the Red 5 Garage and one spot in Red 7B. The first thought was that we might go “old school” with the whole parking garage — tailgate in there. Just like everyone did when we were in Oakland with Pitt Stadium.

Problem is, Alco prohibits grills and glass bottles in the garage. Not sure how strictly this is enforced, but given this is Alco and a Pitt game — not a Steelers game — I expect rather stridently.

I think everyone understands that space is limited with the removal of some key parking, there would be some problems and frustrations.

The way that Pitt has handled it, however, has been mind-blowingly stupid.

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There’s so many tabs I expected to get to the last couple days and then the offense went splat in the final scrimmage and that kind of overwhelmed everything.

The one thing I didn’t read that much about was how much was it the offensive line being overwhelmed and how much was it the QB play stunk. A lot seemed to fall on the QB, but clearly there are still concerns.

The starting offensive line is going to be Jason Pinkston, Lucas Nix, Alex Karabin, Greg Gaskins and Chris Jacobson. I know we’ve been told there is an open competition at some of the spots but Gaskins has taken pretty much every snap with the first team and Karabin’s primary “competition” at center was from Jack Lippert, who coaches are talking about moving to guard. The good news is this unit of five has played together all camp, so they should have some chemistry by the time the Utah game comes around. But as yesterday showed, the unit still has some work to do in order to prove it can be the kind of unit which can dominate defenses.

Let me see if I have this straight. The walk-on senior is going to be the starting center. Fine. Sounds good. Reasonable, all things considered when you have converted a D-lineman that is a redshirt freshman as his back-up. Let him spend the year really learning the position and being ready to take over next season, getting ready to play this year.

Wait, what?

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I would argue that nothing in the June conference expansion insanity was matched for sheer lunacy in such a compressed period as yesterday.

Briefly recapping and a hat tip to the Wiz of Odds for some links.

News leaked that BYU was going to bolt the MWC and strike out as an independent in football. They would pull a ND and join the WAC in all other sports.

Keep in mind that BYU was the lead team in creating the MWC and crippling the WAC in the first place.

The WAC, though, with losing Boise to MWC kind of has no choice. They need something to help them, and if they can get BYU to at least play a few home-and-homes with their schools in football (like ND and the Big East) it keeps them viable.

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We interrupt puff pieces, minor injury reports, good news in recruiting, overall optimism for the season, free floating offensive line angst, and all other things that have been in the blog for breaking news.

The offense sucked in the second and final scrimmage of training camp.

It wasn’t quite so enjoyable Wednesday afternoon when the Pitt offense struggled mightily against the Panther defense in the final training camp scrimmage. While offensive stars Dion Lewis and Jon Baldwin took part in only about 10 plays, there were turnovers, dropped balls, penalties and an overall lack of execution.

“I think there is disappointment,” Cignetti said. “I saw things out there today that could lose football games.”

During the two-hour scrimmage, Pitt rushed for 64 yards on 54 carries as a team. The quarterbacks completed 12 of 37 pass attempts for 90 yards and one interception. The only touchdown was a 34-yard pass from backup quarterback Pat Bostick to senior wide receiver Greg Cross on an underthrown ball that Cross adjusted to catch.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” coach Dave Wannstedt said. “It’s obvious that we’ve got some strengths, but we also have some areas of much-needed improvement.”

Sunseri was 6-17 for 36 yards and just didn’t look good (not that Bostick looked very good either). The sad thing, the defense was a bit sloppy in the area of turnovers, so it could have been worse.

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A 4-star and one of the top recruits in Pennsylvania made his decision today. Kyoshen Jarrett did the hat thing. He had VT, Michigan, Pitt and Penn St. It was Pitt.

Jarrett is also the fifth Rivals250 prospect to commit to Pitt, along with Chestnut, Poteat, Paramus (NJ) Paramus Catholic defensive tackle Marquise Wright and Atco (NJ) Winslow Township receiver Bill Belton. This marks just the second time in the Wannstedt Era that Pitt has had five Rivals250 members. In the class of 2008, Pitt finished with five recruits in the Rivals250.

Rivals.com and Scout.com both have him as a 4-star recruit. They both rank him closely as the 13th and 16th, respectively, best cornerback prospect in the country. ESPN.com/Scouts, Inc. is not quite so high on Jarrett. Listing him as 32nd best and essentially grading him out as a 3-star (Insider subs). Still they say nice things about his talent.

Jarrett brings good size, closing speed and athleticism to the corner position. He has above average height and a well-built frame. Utilizes his size to his advantage out on the perimeter jamming and rerouting receivers aggressively off the line. Closes fast and strong. Shows good plant and drive skill. Effective blitzer off the boundary and can set the edge on run support. Does a good job fighting through the stalk block. Is a strong tackler and reliable in the openfield.

What the question ultimately seems to come down to in the evaluation is his overall speed.

This is probably a bigger blow to Michigan and ol’ DickRod than for Penn St. or VT. What with Turner leaving and now Troy Woolfolk out for the year. It hasn’t been a good time to be a CB associated with the Wolverines.

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