Matt Freed, Post-Gazette Aaron Gray and the Pitt Panthers are still a good basketball team. Click photo for larger image. Related articles Pitt basketball Q&A with Ray Fittipaldo Smizik: Better shooting key for Pitt

Senior center Aaron Gray is an indispensable player for the Pitt basketball team. That might have been surmised already because Gray averages a double-double and provides a definite deterrent for opposing teams with his 7-foot frame in the lane.

But did you ever wonder how to put a value on Gray's worth to Pitt when he is on the floor as opposed to on the bench? Or did you ever wish you could calculate how much more effective Pitt is when Gray is in the game?

Next season college basketball fans will get a glimpse of such statistics from college basketball junkie Ken Pomeroy. A meteorologist in Salt Lake City by day who operates the college basketball Web site kenpom.com by night, Pomeroy can calculate plus/minus ratings for basketball players much in the same way the rating is calculated in hockey.

These statistics have been around basketball for some time, but the public rarely got to see the data. Pomeroy does some draft work for NBA teams, and they use the data to evaluate players. He would like to offer some plus/minus content to his site starting next season if all goes well.

Pomeroy agreed to calculate the plus/minus rating and on/off rating for every Pitt player in every game this season for this story. He gathered the necessary information on the Internet and fed it into his computer to produce the data.

The only game not represented in the ratings is the Villanova game because the Wildcats did not post the game summary and play-by-play on their Web site.

The data is revealing. It is no surprise that Gray is by far Pitt's most valuable player in terms of plus/minus and on/off rating.

Gray is a plus-19 in the on/off rating, which is calculated per 40 minutes. In the plus/minus ratings, Gray is a plus-312, or an average of 12.5, for the season. The next-closest player is Antonio Graves at 241 (9.6). Gray posted a negative rating in a game only twice this season -- in losses to Louisville and Wisconsin.

Gray had a season-best plus-26 rating in Pitt's victory at West Virginia. That is interesting because Gray had been viewed as a liability on defense against the Mountaineers in seasons past because of his perimeter defense. That no longer seems to be the case. It also demonstrates how effective Gray was on offense against the Mountaineers, who play long stretches without a true center in the game.

According to the ratings, Pitt's least valuable player is sophomore forward Sam Young, which will disappoint the legions of Panthers fans who want to see Young get more playing time. Young has an on/off rating of minus-11 and only a marginally better plus/minus rating than fellow reserves Keith Benjamin and Tyrell Biggs. He has been a minus seven times this season, including a team-worst minus-15 against Louisville. Only Biggs and Ronald Ramon have been a minus in more games. It should be noted that Young had been a plus in most of the recent games before Louisville.

Power forward Levon Kendall scored the worst among the starters. Kendall's on/off rating was zero. But Kendall scored better than all the reserves in plus/minus and in the on/off rating.

Pitt coach Jamie Dixon does not need the data to tell him he has the made the right decisions about his starting lineup or his rotation, but he was happy to see that the data confirmed what he had thought.

"So, I'm starting the right guys," Dixon said, smiling yesterday after reviewing the numbers. "It's exactly what I would have predicted."

One note of caution about the numbers: The starters benefit greatly by getting to play with a player of Gray's caliber for longer periods than the reserves.

That's one way the numbers can be misleading, but Pomeroy said a 25-game sample is enough for a fair evaluation of a player's worth to the team. Dixon agreed that the data reflected a fair evaluation of his team over the course of a season.

Here's an example of how a one-game analysis can be misleading: Ronald Ramon had a great line in the boxscore in Pitt's 77-74 overtime loss to Marquette. He led Pitt with 21 points, was 5 for 9 from the field, 4 for 6 from 3-point range and 7 for 8 from the free-throw line. But Ramon was a minus-4 for the game. In the same game, small forward Mike Cook had an average game with 11 points (5 for 9 from the field, 0 for 3 from 3-point range), 5 rebounds, 2 assists and 4 turnovers. But had a team-best plus-14 rating.

The most underrated player on the team seems to be Graves. He had been a plus player in every Big East game until Louisville and also had the second-best on/off rating behind Gray (plus-5). That would suggest Graves is the second-most important player on the team. A race for third would be between Cook and point guard Levance Fields. Cook has a better on/off rating, but Fields has a better plus-minus rating.

Dixon and his staff have examined plus/minus ratings in the past and have found it a useful evaluation tool. Dixon swears by another ratings system, however, when determining a player's worth on his team.

Dixon has his players play mini-games throughout practices. The games have winners and losers. The teams are switched constantly, but an assistant coach keeps track of each player's won-loss record over the course of a practice and the season. Dixon said those results reveal the same information as plus-minus ratings.

"It's very much the same idea," he said. "We're keeping track of everything they do just like with the numbers."