Bulls, picked third in Big East media poll, ready to contend for title

Posted Aug 3, 2011 by Adam Adkins

Updated Aug 3, 2011 at 01:04 AM

NEWPORT, R.I. University of South Florida senior cornerback Quenton Washington didn’t mince words Tuesday when talking about what he believes the Bulls are capable of in 2011.

“The sky is the limit,” Washington said. “I feel like we’re really capable of winning the Big East.”

If USF makes a run at its first conference title, it will come as a bit of a surprise to those who cover the league. USF was picked to finish third in the annual Big East preseason media poll released Tuesday, behind projected league champion West Virginia and Pittsburgh. It is the second-highest USF has been projected in the poll, behind only 2008, when the Bulls were picked second.

When informed of where the Bulls were projected to finish, Washington merely shrugged it off, noting there’s a long season ahead.

“The time when I want to be at the top is at the end,” Washington said.

Truth be told, you would have been hard-pressed to find anyone representing the league Tuesday to say the Bulls don’t have a chance to do just that. The one shared sentiment circulating around the conference’s media day at the Viking Hotel was that it’s a wide-open race to the Big East crown this season.

“Week in and week out, as all the coaches have said, it’s going to be a dogfight,” Connecticut coach Paul Pasqualoni said. “There’s going to be teams in this league that have a better record than others at the end, but there’s not going to be any bad teams. There are no bad teams in this league.”

USF coach Skip Holtz took the media’s projection in stride.

“It excites me that people are thinking about us in that light, but we’ve still got to go do it. That excitement and that energy is somewhat withheld to say that we’ve still got to go do it. We’ve still got to get on the field,” Holtz said.

“I keep saying, being surrounded by the three teams that we are (Florida, Miami and Florida State) we’ve got to get where we can compete for a conference championship and where we can compete for a national championship. When we can build this program to that point, then we deserve to stand up and beat our chests and talk about how we’ve come.”

There’s no question where the Bulls want to go, and senior offensive guard Jeremiah Warren believes the team has done what’s necessary to give it that opportunity to reach its goals.

“With all the work we’ve been doing, we’re capable of doing basically anything that we put our mind to,” Warren said. “Right now the confidence level is very high. Going into the second year under coach Holtz, everybody knows everything now. Now it’s more of not what to do, but we’ve just got to get the technique down.

“All in all, this is a great league. The Big East Conference is just phenomenal all around. Each team, you’ve got to be ready. But we all feel that we can make a run.”

—-My ballot for the Big East media poll looked nearly identical to what was released Tuesday.

Here’s the way I voted: 1. West Virginia, 2. Pittsburgh, 3. USF, 4. Cincinnati, 5. Syracuse, 6. Connecticut, 7. Louisville, 8. Rutgers.

Here is how the preseason media poll looked: 1. West Virginia, 2. Pittsburgh, 3. USF, 4. Syracuse, 5. Cincinnati, 6. Connecticut, 7. Louisville, 8. Rutgers.