Pittsburgh ? Pittsburgh’s basketball team never has been lucky enough to have an arena like this, with vast expanses of glass, spacious locker rooms and fan amenities.

What hasn’t changed is the team that plays in this fancy new building. It’s a group of overachievers who weren’t highly recruited as individuals but form a striking mix on court together.

Pittsburgh goes into its season opener — and its Petersen Events Center opener — against Duquesne on Saturday night as the No. 5 team in the country, the first time since the 1987-88 season it has opened a season ranked so high.

That ’88 team was led by Charles Smith and Jerome Lane, players won by Pitt in recruiting battles with scores of big-name schools. They led the Panthers to some of their greatest basketball successes, even if all their winning never got them past the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

Fast forward to this 2002-03 team, and its heritage could not be any more different from that Smith-Lane team that, until now, last put Pitt basketball on the national stage.

There is Brandin Knight, as unlikely a third-team All-American point guard as there could be. He was barely recruited out of high school ” even the school where his father starred, Seton Hall, didn’t seek his signature. He doesn’t make 50 percent of his free throws, an unheard-of weakness for the player who handles the ball as much as he does.

Yet talk to coach Ben Howland, who entrusted his team to Knight almost the minute he arrived at Pitt and never has been sorry since, and he will tell you Knight might be the most valuable player in the country.

Ontario Lett, the inside player who came on so strong at the end of Pitt’s improbable 29-6 season last spring, was a late-summer recruit after Howland saw him in a pickup game.

Howland signed swingman Donatas Zavackas, even though he was ineligible for his senior season of high school because of a transfer rule.

Julius Page was a Buffalo, N.Y., high school scoring machine that Howland developed into an intimidating defender.

None was recruited by top schools such as Duke, Oklahoma, Florida, Maryland or Connecticut, yet Pitt is ranked above all of those teams.

Pitt’s No. 5 ranking is a remarkable contrast from a year ago, when Pitt also was fifth in the preseason ” fifth in the Big East Conference West Division poll, that is. The Panthers’ early season crowds didn’t come close to filling the 6,798-seat Fitzgerald Field House.

Now, every seat in the 12,500-seat Petersen Events Center is sold out for the season, and students are fighting over the 1,500 seats available to them. Winning has a lot to do with it ” Pitt never won more games than it did last season

“All of our players are excited, because they’ve been here watching it get built,” Howland said.