2003 Top 50 List: Yes
Dan Collins List: Yes
Juan Dixon was a highly regarded recruit from Calvert Hall in Baltimore in the Class of 1997. He enrolled at Maryland in the fall of 1997, but he didn’t make the SAT score needed to play basketball until November, by which point he had missed a couple of months of practice. As a result, Gary Williams decided to redshirt Dixon. Isn’t it funny how things turn out? As a result of that redshirt, Dixon was a senior in 2002, not 2001. If Dixon doesn’t redshirt, Maryland probably doesn’t have a national championship banner hanging up.
Dixon had about as close to a storybook career as you can get. As mentioned, he redshirted his first year. Then in 1999, he played only 15 minutes per game and averaged 7.4 points. While there were signs – if you do the math, you’ll realize that 7.4 points in 15 minutes is pretty good – he hadn’t really made an impact. He didn’t crack the ACC All-Freshman team, finishing behind such notables as UNC’s Kris Lang and NC State’s Adam Harrington. There was no indication that he was going to be a great player. Nowadays a guy like that would probably transfer (why must we always say “enter the transfer portal”?), but Dixon saw an opportunity with the departures of Terrell Stokes and Steve Francis. And boy did he take advantage. In 2000 Dixon led the Terrapins in scoring with 18 points per game and played his way right onto first team All-ACC, just ahead of teammates Lonny Baxter and Terence Morris. Maryland finished second in the ACC and ranked 17th nationally.
From there, Dixon just kept getting better and so did the Terrapins. The 2001 team made a great run to Maryland’s first ever Final Four, dominating #1 seed Stanford in the regional final before losing to Duke in an All-ACC semifinal. They returned everyone except Morris in 2002, and we know what happened. The Terrapins went 15-1 in the ACC, Dixon won ACC Player of the Year in a very close vote over Jason Williams, and Maryland cut down the nets in Atlanta as national champions in Dixon’s final college game, with Dixon named Most Outstanding Player of the tournament.
That’s some career, isn’t it? Five years, going from a redshirt year through continuous improvement to a National Champion / First Team All-American / ACC Player of the Year / MOP of the NCAA Tournament senior year. I don’t think there’s anything to compare to it, really.
I previously listed Dixon’s tournament performance as one of the all-time greats. It’s right up there with Laettner 1991, Thompson 1974, May 2005, and Battier 2011. If you said Dixon’s was the best NCAA Tournament performance ever by an ACC player, I wouldn’t argue with you. Much.
Notable players who cut down the nets as national champions in their final game as a senior:
- Lennie Rosenbluth, 1957
- Tom Burleson, 1974
- Christian Laettner, 1992
- George Lynch, 1993
- Shane Battier, 2001
- Dixon and Lonny Baxter, 2002
- Tyler Hansbrough, 2009
- Jon Scheyer, 2010