SBNation.com has a look at the top teams in college basketball for the 2011-2012 season. (It's never too early, I guess.) Kentucky, North Carolina and Ohio top the rankings, but Pitt, which spent most of the 2010-2011 season in the top five, is absent from SB Nation's top 10. That is perhaps understandable, given that the Panthers will be without Gilbert Brown, Brad Wanamaker and Gary McGhee. SB Nation notes that Pitt's 2011-2012 season "is going to be the Ashton Gibbs show," and even that is in question now that Gibbs has declared for the NBA draft.
↵The top 10, by the way, includes Big East teams Syracuse (No. 4), Connecticut (No. 6) and Louisville (No. 9), so it appears that the Big East's supposedly disappointing NCAA tournament performance (which a lot of national commenters noted with glee, at least until a Big East team, UConn, ended up winning the whole thing) won't prevent the conference from being recognized next year.