After years of chasing the top teams in college basketball, the Pitt Panthers finally rose to the No. 1 ranking in the national polls yesterday. With the adulation and respect of being the nation's top-ranked team comes one undeniable fact: The Panthers have gone from the hunters to the hunted overnight.

"People are gunning for us now," senior point guard Levance Fields said. "We're the top dogs in the country. We have to play that way and practice that way."

Pitt, one of four remaining undefeated teams in NCAA Division I, ascended to the top spot in the men's polls yesterday afternoon, a day after previously unanimous No. 1 North Carolina lost at home to unranked Boston College. That, coupled with Connecticut's loss last week to Georgetown, allowed the Panthers to jump two spots from No. 3 to the top spot.

Pitt received 70 of 72 first-place votes in The Associated Press poll and 30 of 31 in the coaches' poll. North Carolina, ranked third behind Duke in the both polls, received the other first-place votes.

It was a long time coming for the Panthers, who had been ranked as high as No. 2 in the basketball polls on a few previous occasions, most recently in 2006, but never before have been ranked No. 1. It also breaks a long drought for the school's sports teams.

It had been more than a quarter century since a Pitt sports team was No. 1. The last time Pitt was ranked No. 1 in any sport was the first week of November in 1982, when the football team, led by senior quarterback Dan Marino, held down the top spot in the polls before losing to Notre Dame.

"It's something every basketball player dreams of, being No. 1 as an individual and as a team," senior forward Sam Young said. "That's what we work for. Now that we have it, we have to keep it. We're here now, but we're not done. We're going to try to keep it as long as we can."

Pitt won't get to play a game as the No. 1 team until Sunday, when the Panthers play host to St. John's at the Petersen Events Center. Having a week off under these circumstances can be a nightmare for a coach, but Pitt's Jamie Dixon said he was confident that his veteran team would be able to handle the situation properly.

"It's great for our university, our fans and our city," Dixon said. "I think our guys will use it as motivation. Our seniors will use it as motivation more than anything else. That's a good thing."

Case in point: many of the players on the team, seniors and underclassmen alike, came to the Petersen Events Center late last night after watching North Carolina lose.

"We can look at it two ways," senior forward Tyrell Biggs said. "It can be a distraction or it can be motivation. We want to look toward the motivation."

The seniors said the team must use the No. 1 ranking as a stepping stone to achieving more important things, such as a Big East championship and the team's ultimate goal -- the Final Four and an NCAA championship. Otherwise, it will be merely a footnote in the history books if the team falls short of its greater goals.

"We still have the same goals and want to achieve the same things," Young said. "Nothing has changed at all. We just have more people believing in us now. We feel like in the past we haven't made history. Now we're feeling like we're continuing to make history. This is only the beginning for us. It's a long road, a long season. We still have a long way to go. I think we'll continue to make history down the stretch."

Said Fields: "This is a big thing. Everywhere you go someone is saying, 'We're No.1.' But we know we have a lot more work to do. That's the big thing. We all understand we can get better still.

"We understand that if we stay healthy we can be this good. We don't want to be No. 1 and forget about our next opponent. St. John's beat Notre Dame, which is a top 10 team, so we have to get focused and not let it get to us."

NOTE -- The new polls also brought more good news for the Big East Conference. Nine men's teams from the conference are ranked in each poll, a record for any conference. The Big East had set the record with eight teams in early December.