Last season, Jermaine Dixon was known as Pitt’s top defensive guard, usually counted on to… Last season, Jermaine Dixon was known as Pitt’s top defensive guard, usually counted on to shut down the opposing team’s best perimeter player.

This year, as the Pitt men’s basketball team travels to Ireland to adjust to playing without the graduated shooting guard, Dixon is spending his summer preparing to take the next step in his basketball career.

“I’ve been training and getting ready for the professional level,” Dixon said. “I worked out with a few NBA teams, like the Nets and the Bucks.”

Working out with those teams gave Dixon the opportunity to see where he stands with some of the upper-level prospects.

“The process is good,” he said. “It’s definitely a learning experience. I had the chance to work out with some of the top players in the country and it was fun. It was an experience.”

With the Nets, he saw familiar Big East face Luke Harangody from Notre Dame and in his workout with the Bucks he worked out with former St. John’s player Anthony Mason Jr.

“I think I did well against the top guys,” Dixon said. “The teams that I worked out for liked me. I feel like I played well.”

Currently, Dixon is preparing for the prospect of going overseas to play professional basketball, something other Pitt players have done in the past, including Levance Fields in Russia and Tyrell Biggs in Greece.

Dixon said he doesn’t have a preference for the country where he ends up, as long as he has the opportunity to play basketball at the professional level. He said his agent is talking to teams in Israel, Italy, and Turkey and Dixon is waiting on word from them.

“I’m ready to go wherever it takes me,” he said. “I really don’t have a preference. I hear Israel is a nice country, so I wouldn’t mind going there. I hear good things about it from people that played there.”

He said his greatest strengths that he’ll bring to a team are his defense and his ability to get the basket, adding that he’s able to defend a lot of different guys, something that Panther fans know well from watching him in a Pitt uniform for two years.

He’s working on his jump shot and ball handling skills, because he’s trying to make the transition to point guard.

Through it all, he’s keeping in shape. He said he works out everyday lifting, getting up and down the court, and running on the track while he waits to hear where his basketball career will take him.

During his final season at Pitt, Dixon was fourth on the team in scoring with 10.6 points per game while also grabbing four rebounds per game. In his junior year, he put up 8.4 points and averaged 2.6 rebounds.

He transferred to Pitt for his junior season after spending two years at Tallahassee Junior College. Dixon emerged as a leader during his senior season, even after sitting out the first part of the year with a foot injury.

This year’s Panthers know what they’ll be missing without Dixon on the court. Before the team left for Ireland, senior Gilbert Brown said one of the positives of the trip was giving the team an opportunity to adjust to playing without Dixon.

“[It gives us a chance] just to get a little bit of a feeling of how we’re going to play without Jermaine Dixon, to see how we’re going to orchestrate the offense and also on the defensive end, because he was our defensive player,” Brown said.