I asked the staff to gaze into their crystal balls to see who they thought would win the Big East in 2010…and the unanimous selection was (drum roll please…if you don’t have drums just make some funny noises with your lips) WVU! I mean, come on…did you think that we were going to choose anyone else?

Ok, so we do have a few homers on the site (*cough*cough not me *cough*cough), but the other guys are real critics of the program right now. But even those guys can’t ignore the talent on this team.

Our final poll landed like this:
1) West Virginia (4)
T-2) Pitt
T-2) UConn
T-4) Rutgers
T-4) Cincinnati
6) USF
7) Syracuse
8 ) Louisville

The Big East media selected Pitt to win it all. In fact, it seems like Pitt is the conference favorite of just about every publication that you read. But does anybody do their homework these days?

West Virginia returns the most starters of any team in the conference, while Pitt returns just 11. Now granted of that 11 they have some pretty good talent – Baldwin, Lewis, Romeus, Sheard, etc. But they have a lot of questions marks on this team as well starting at QB. Is Tino Sunseri the answer? Having Lewis to hand the ball off to and Baldwin to pass to will ease a lot of pressure, but I’ll be interested to see what he can do and how he develops as the season wears on.

Pitt has to replace several starters on the offensive line and some key guys on defense as well. They may very well win the conference, but I’m not buying into the Pitt hype just yet.

Personally, I see UConn as a bigger contender to win the conference instead of Pitt (outside of us, of course). They return the 2nd most starters and have a nice corps of talent led by tailback Jordman Todman.

But none of that matters because we are going to regain our foothold on the conference beginning on 9/4. When the smoke clears (you know – from the musket being fired…ok, lame joke, I know) the boys in the old gold and blue are going to stand victorious on top of the Mountain.