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Today, we continue to rank the careers of all of the 67 basketball players ever to suit up for Jamie Dixon. As a reminder, here's the drill. Editor Anson Whaley, contributor Jim Hammett, and myself ranked each player and our composite results are displayed.
Before we get started, we employed a few main rules here:
1. Only the Pitt portion of a player's career counted - Khem Birch played less than a season with Pitt. While he became a productive college player elsewhere, 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 under Dixon. 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.
As we go through this list, we want to hear from you about players slotted too high, too low, or even the ones you think we got right. I've organized the rankings and would love to hear from you on Twitter as well @AronMinkoff.
| 60. Dante Milligan |
Position: Forward Games Played: 5 Year(s) under Dixon: 2004-2005 MPG: 4.6 PPG: 1.4 RPG: 1.2 APG: 0.2
Cardiac Hill Rankings Aron Minkoff: 59 Jim Hammett: 56 Anson Whaley: 62 Average Ranking: 59
Milligan actually tied with Mike Lecak with an average of 59, but to break the tie, we first threw out the lowest vote and averaged the remaining two. Because we were still tied there, we threw out the next lowest one, so Milligan just beat him out. He didn’t play much under Dixon, but still scored over a point per game on average in his limited time with the program before transferring and having a relatively successful career at UMass.
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| 59. Joshua Ko |
Position: Guard Games Played: 15 Year(s) under Dixon: 2013-2015 MPG: 1.2 PPG: 0.7 RPG: 0.1 APG: 0
Cardiac Hill Rankings: Aron Minkoff: 53 Jim Hammett: 62 Anson Whaley: 61 Average Ranking: 58.7
So, it is my doing that Ko is ranked higher than he is. Not by much overall, but I ranked him significantly higher than where the average of Jim and Anson’s picks are. To me, Ko is a great guy to have on the team. He is not your average end-of-the-bench guy. He was the Gatorade basketball player of the year for the state of Hawaii in his senior season there, and while Hawaii is not exactly a hotbed for basketball, there are still only 49 other players each year receiving such an award from their state. Ko is able to push the guys each day. He has that fun-loving attitude and seems to really mesh well with the team. He is exactly what you want in a walk-on. The only two walk-ons that I ranked higher are Nick Rivers and Aaron Phillips-Nwankwo. Ko is great in my opinion, but I can’t disagree much with this overall ranking. Plus, he's only played one year under Dixon to this point. |
| 58. Ed Turner |
Position: Forward Games Played: 8 Year(s) under Dixon: 2003-2004 MPG: 4 PPG: 1 RPG: 0.4 APG: 0.1
Cardiac Hill Rankings Aron Minkoff: 57 Jim Hammett: 55 Anson Whaley: 63 Average Ranking: 58.3 Turner was nothing special in his lone year at Pitt, Dixon’s first year as head coach. He would transfer to the University of Louisiana-Lafayette where he would play in 26.7 mpg and averaged 8 ppg, 2.8 rpg |
| 57. Marcus Bowman |
Position: Guard Games Played: 20 Year(s) under Dixon: 2003-2006 MPG: 1.2 PPG: 0.2 RPG: 0.3 APG: 0
Cardiac Hill Rankings Aron Minkoff: 56 Jim Hammett: 59 Anson Whaley: 58 Average Ranking: 57.7
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| 56. Tim Frye |
Position: Guard Games Played: 24 Year(s) under Dixon: 2007-2010 MPG: 1.5 PPG: 0.7 RPG: 0.2 APG: 0.1 Cardiac Hill Rankings Aron Minkoff: 61 Jim Hammett: 58 Anson Whaley: 54 Average Ranking: 57.7
We had another tie here and after tossing out the lowest vote for Frye and Bowman, Frye ranked slightly higher. Frye played for three seasons under Dixon as a walk-on and did about what you expect from a walk-on, eating up minutes towards the end of the game and mostly sitting on the bench. Nothing too special here, but he did manage to get into 24 games over his career. |
Tomorrow, we've got #51 - #55.