So with his college career at its infancy, you look at Dante Taylor, potentially the most impactful athletic presence to descend on Pitt basketball in nearly a quarter century, and you don't see quite what you expect.

And that's good, actually.

For example, from my seat at the glorified shoot-around against Eastern Kentucky the other night, it appeared that Taylor did not have any tattoos, which in this era simply cannot be legal, can it?

"Am I seeing things," I said to the 18-year-old from New York after Pitt went to 3-0, "or do you have no tats?"

"You're seeing things," he said, peeling off his warm-up top to reveal two of the longest arms in Pittsburgh and to begin the verbal cataloging. "I've got this one, this one, here's my mom's name, here's one that says 'Dedication,' and I've got one on my chest too."

"What's the one say?"

"Fear none, trust few."

OK, must have been the lighting.

Funny then, at the dawn of this potentially difficult winter for Jamie Dixon, his grand prize recruit seems a lot more trusting than fearful. Here's a McDonald's All-American, only the fifth in Pitt's sketchy recruiting history, who is so totally accepting of Dixon's dictums that he played 20 minutes in his third game, had no turnovers, and took exactly two shots.

That he made both, the second a rafters-rattling follow jam, had little to do with the totality of his relatively understated performance. You expect, from a 6-9, 240 pound tower of quickness who won the skills competition prior to the McDonald's All-America Game, a battery of floor-running, ball-handling, quick-shooting that separated him from the best of the best, something well outside the standard Panther muck-and-grind.

But you might not get it for awhile.

And that's good, actually.

As the Panthers invade Kansas City for the completion of the O'Reilly Auto Parts CBE Classic just as the Steelers depart, Dante Taylor appears more content to practically rebuild his game from the Dixon foundation up.

"I'm happy just to contribute, to just play," Taylor said. "Get rebounds, play defense; I'm not tryin' to score every time down the court, but yeah, that's definitely a big adjustment for me because in high school I was always the main guy, getting the ball on every possession, getting a bunch of touches. But here I want to play the way they play.

"Coach always says, play wide, play long, and run the floor."

Against Binghamton, in his second game, Taylor took three charges and threw himself on the floor for loose balls. Against Eastern Kentucky, he blocked four shots, misdirected about 14 with his wind-mill appendages, claimed 12 rebounds, and watched intently as 6-10 junior Gary McGhee played the other 19 minutes at the same spot.

McGhee played Dixon's system like someone who's been around the blocks a few times, but the fact is that with Taylor on the floor, Pitt outscored Eastern Kentucky 36-27. With McGhee, the margin was 35-33.

With Taylor on the floor for most of it, Eastern Kentucky didn't score in the final 6:57 of the first half. But that kind of impact might not be what Pitt fanatics have longed for in their tireless rhetorical pursuit of a McDonald's All-American. To them, having Taylor share minutes and bang bodies beneath the window is tantamount to parking a Porsche in a PAT garage.

"I watched a lot of Big East basketball growing up," Taylor said. "I liked that style, but I think I'm going to have an advantage because I'm going to use my quickness to get around a lot of those guys."

That might be Taylor's sense of it, and you'll excuse the callow exuberance of someone who won't yet be 18 when the Big East Tournament starts March 9 about 20 miles from where he grew up. There's no empirical evidence that he'll have anything substantive to say to Notre Dame's Luke Harandogy, or to Georgetown's Greg Monroe, or to Louisville's fearsome 6-9, 260 pound Samardo Samuels, the Jammin' Jamaican, or to any of the balance of the Big East's big-time, big rep, big men.

We're still more than five weeks from the dawn of Big East hostilities, but in an important sense Dante Taylor has already found his place in this conference, if only because he sought it out. This is a stud who turned down Georgetown, turned down Connecticut, turned down Villanova, turned down West Virginia, and turned down Syracuse.

One way or the other, whether as a galloping, tomahawk-jamming, highlights-feeding phenomenon or as a typical Panthers defense-first flesh eater, it seems Taylor will make every Big East school but Pitt regret his decision.

Gene Collier's "Two-Minute Warning" videos are featured exclusively on PG+, a members-only web site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.