Over the course of the next month, I have organized Cardiac Hill rankings of every player that has suited up under Jamie Dixon. 67 players in total have played in his 12 seasons as the head coach of the Panthers men’s basketball team.
Myself, along with editor Anson Whaley and contributor Jim Hammett, ranked all 67 players, from the stars such as Sam Young and Steven Adams to the guys who kept the back-end of the bench warm such as Ryan Tiesi. Every player is ranked and the result is a compilation of our thoughts. As you can imagine, we didn't agree on everything and at the end, we'll give you our individual results as well.
Everyday, new rankings will be published, but not all at once of course. The first batches will include more players but as we get to the top-30 players they will have their own individual posts.
Before we get started, we employed a few main rules here:
1. Only a player's portion of their Pitt career counted - Khem Birch played less than a season with Pitt. While he was a productive college player, the fact that he spent so little time with the Panthers showed in our rankings.
2. Only the time a player spent under Dixon counted - A player like Julius Page, for example, would rank higher, but he spent only his senior year under Dixon.
3. Best career, not best player - This isn't about determining the best player under Dixon. It's more about who had the best career at Pitt. Steven Adams may be a better basketball player than several of the guys on the list but he only played at Pitt for a year and has certainly developed more in the NBA since then.
The first post will be players ranked 67-61 and will be released tomorrow. Please do not hesitate to join in on the conversation and comment who you think should be ranked where, who was mis-ranked. And feel free to tweet at me with your opinions at @aronminkoff.