Okay. Nothing like late breaking news for a Friday, but…

Quarterback Mark Myers, who had a chance to be Tino Sunseri’s backup this season, is leaving the Pitt football team and hopes to transfer to a Division III school.

Myers’ departure leaves Pitt with three quarterbacks, including freshman Chad Voytik and sophomore Trey Anderson.

Well, nothing like waiting until the last minute. Best of luck to Myers.

Mildly surprised he’s dropping all the way down to D-III. Best guess is he’s moving back to the Cleveland area and will attend one of the many D-III schools — John Carroll, Baldwin-Wallace… That would explain dropping down that far.

That narrows the field of the back-up QB spot to Anderson or Voytik. I really don’t think they are sending Gonzalez back to the QB spot. Voytik’s odds of redshirting just got a little slimmer.

UPDATE: Oh, boy. Left Tackle Juantez Hollins has been suspended for the entire season. For the always nebulous “violation of team policy.” Hollins had also been suspended for the spring game.

Freshman Chris Davis has a suspension for the first week of training camp. He’ll be permitted to join the team on August 12.

Sorry football, this is another basketball post. It’s a significant recruiting item.

St. Benedict's Prep F Mike Young will announce his college choice Saturday, head coach Mark Taylor confirms to @SNYtv. MCA says Pitt or UF

— Adam Zagoria (@AdamZagoria) August 3, 2012

A bit surprising in that Mike Young had not indicated that he was going to be making a decision this soon. So, there is always reason to be nervous. Especially if Billy Donovan and Florida are the other finalist.

Young is a big target for Pitt. He’s a Pittsburgh native who started at Shadyside Aacademy before heading to New Jersey for better basketball competition.

Young is a consensus 4-star power forward. He’s 6-8 and somewhere between 210-225 pounds. He plays in the post. Even better, wants to play in the post. Rivals.com ranks him at #102 nationally. Scout.com says #92. ESPN.com says #67. All of these rankings are from before the summer tournament season, so the rankings are subject to some significant revisions in the coming weeks.

A few basketball items to put out there before football becomes the primary.

Lists. Lists. Lists.

Okay, just one. Athlon follows up ranking the coaches in each conference with an overall list of top college basketball coaches. Coach Jamie Dixon ranks 13th on the list which is more than respectable. Izzo ranks first in case you were wondering who was #1.

Still no word on the final game for the non-conference schedule. And hence, no schedule announced from Pitt. As part of the trend, the only pre-season tournament that hasn’t announced its seedings is the one in which Pitt will participate.

The Atlantis Bracket announcement Thursday leaves just one major tournament to be completely unveiled: the 16-team NIT Season Tip-Off Nov. 21-23. The four hosts are Kansas State, Pitt, Virginia and Michigan. If you were to seed this event then it would probably go 1. Michigan. 2. Kansas State. 3. Pitt 4. Virginia. Virginia and Pitt probably have the most to gain. Michigan and Kansas State play in power-rating rich conferences and are playing strong schedules. Pitt is in the Big East, which will provide plenty of RPI pop and quality wins, but has a soft nonconference slate, putting even more pressure on this event.

No matter what, Pitt will get hammered by the punditry for its non-con this year.

(more…)