ATLANTA -- The best player in the NCAA Tournament has won exactly zero postseason national awards. He's taken the trophy O-fer, the plaque collar. Bupkus.

Naismith Award winner? Jason Williams of Duke.

U.S. Basketball Writers Association. player of the year? Williams.

Wooden Award winner? Williams.

ESPN's player of the year? Williams

National Associated of Basketball Coaches' player of the year? Williams and, just to break the monotony, Kansas's Drew Gooden.

	“	Juan Dixon I might be small, but I ain't weak. ... (Indiana) can try to double-team me, or use a box-and-one. I don't think it'll work. ”
		— Juan Dixon, Maryland senior guard

Meanwhile, Maryland's Juan Dixon dinks his way to tournament greatness while Williams earns frequent flyer points on the rubber chicken circuit. Figures. Dixon was considered nothing more than a bench accessory when the Terrapins offered him a scholarship in the fall of 1996. Too short (6-foot-3). As thin as a No. 2 pencil (165 pounds, maybe). Not upper division ACC material. That's what everyone said.

Now look at him. Still 6-3. Still skinny. But only 40 minutes separate him from hoisting the only piece of hardware he's ever wanted to hug: the 2002 men's basketball championship trophy. Beat the suddenly cuddly Indiana Hoosiers on Monday evening at the Georgia Dome and Dixon gets his wish. As an added bonus, Williams and the rest of the Dookies get to watch on the tube.

So far, all Dixon has done in the tournament is become Maryland's career scoring leader, average 27.4 points in the Terps' five NCAA victories, and leave burn marks on late, great Kansas with a 33-point performance against the Jayhawks in Saturday's semifinal win. Is that any good?

"I might be small," he said Sunday, "but I ain't weak."

Dixon was talking about basketball, but he could have said the same thing about growing up in the Garden Village townhouses of tough Northeast Baltimore, of knowing his mother had another love -- heroin, of watching his parents die of AIDS within 16 months of each other. This was the backdrop of his life. So you can understand why he couldn't help but smirk when someone asked him Sunday about facing Indiana defensive stopper Dane Fife, or how he would handle the "pressure" of the Final Four championship.

"This is not going to get to me," he said. "I've been pressured more."

Dixon wore a pair of black Maryland warmups and a Portland TrailBlazers baseball cap, no bend in the bill. He sat on a small makeshift stage and nearly groaned when told his session with the media would last another 50 minutes.

"I ain't going to be able to talk that long, I'll tell you that right now," he said.

But he did talk that long, mostly because his 5-year stay at Maryland couldn't be told in less time. Dixon is part of a senior class that has a combined 109-31 record, the winningest four-year total in Terps history. He played in each of the victories. And few players have earned the trust of Maryland coach Gary Williams as Dixon has. During Williams's China Syndrome moment in the early going of KU game, when it looked as if the coach's face was going to explode like a science project gone bad, it was Dixon who diffused the situation.

	Juan Dixon scored 33 on Kansas and is averaging 27.4 points in the Terps' five NCAA wins.

"Calm down a little," Dixon told his coach. "We're going to win the game."

And they did, turning a 13-2 deficit into a 20-point lead, and finally into a 97-88 victory against a team that many people (hello) picked to leave Atlanta atop Bracketville. Dixon dropped a career-high on the Jayhawks, the most points ever scored by a Terps player in an NCAA tournament game. If he scores 27 against Fife and the fellas -- no small feat -- he'll move ahead of KU's Danny Manning and into third place on the all-time tournament points list.

Fife lives for this sort of challenge. He loves telling anyone who will listen that his father/high school coach would pull him from a game the nanosecond he didn't play defense. Fife held Oklahoma star guard Hollis Price to a dismal 1-of-11 shooting night in the national semifinal. And along with Tom Coverdale, he held Kent State star Trevor Huffman to a 2-of-7 performance in the regional final.

But ask Fife how he's going to put the glove on Dixon and the talkative IU guard is rendered semi-speechless.

"Very good question," said Fife. Then silence.

Later he offers his ultimate compliment.

"Nobody plays harder or with more guts than Juan Dixon," Fife said. "We're going to need five guys to defend him."

Here's a bar bet for you: who won the ACC player of the year? Not Duke's Williams. That's because Dixon is an acquired taste. The longer you watch, the more you appreciate him. He is the only player in NCAA history to score 2,000 points, collect 300 steals and make 200 three-pointers. Kansas can tell you all about him. With the exception of one late 3-point attempt, Dixon forced nothing.

He went to bed early Sunday morning with only one thought on his mind: a national championship. Dixon's jersey hanged from the rafters at Cole Field House and will again at the new Comcast Center. He has records and the respect of demanding alum Gary Williams ("I think Juan's as good as anybody who's ever played at the University of Maryland," Williams said.). What he doesn't have is his hardware hug.

Before the start of every game, Dixon puts on his headphones and listens to track 6 of rapper Jay-Z's "Blueprint" CD. The song is called, "U Don't Know," and at the very end is the lyric Dixon repeats to himself three times (3. . . his jersey number).

"... will ... not ... lose ... ever."

So far, he's 6-0 for March. All he needs now is to go 1-0 in April.

Gene Wojciechowski is a senior reporter at ESPN The Magazine.