4. Sam Merrill:
College Per Game Stats: 16.6 points, 3.6 rebounds, 3.6 assists
College Career Totals: 2197 points (second in Aggie History), 47% FG, 42% from 3, 89.1% FT
Awards:
2x MWC Tournament MVP (2019-2020)
Third-Team All-Mountain West (2018)
2x First-Team All-Mountain West (2019-2020)
Mountain West Player of the Year (2019)
AP Honorable Mention All-American (2019)
Why vote for him? During the regular season Sam plays well. In March though he is off the charts. He has shown up well in the last two Mountain West tournaments and capped it off with a game winner in one of the biggest wins in Aggie history. USU beat the fifth ranked Aztecs which they hadn’t done since they beat the 5th ranked Utes team in the 1960s.
Vote for Sam if you like a scorer that is exceptional in the clutch. As you can tell by his stats, Sam is as close to a 50-40-90 percent shooter (FG% , 3 PT% and FT % respectively) as they come in college. Sam also has plenty of height to translate to the NBA and has improved his ball handling that helped him create enough separation to hit this winning shot. Sam went from a nice story in Logan to the Dark Horse to come out of the college basketball region of this contest.
13 Desmond Penigar:
College Per Game Stats: 16.4 points, 6.8 rebounds, .5 assists
College Career Totals: 1051 points (33rd in school history after only 2 seasons at USU), 432 rebounds, 51.1 FG%
Awards:
2x First-Team All-Big West
Why vote for him? He was great in his short time at Utah State. He won a Big West title in his final year and nearly led the Aggies to an NCAA Tournament upset over Kansas.
Vote for Desmond if you like a talented Aggie basketball player who made the Orlando Magic roster and excelled in the NBA D-League. He has more experience than any Aggie in the NBA and would have marked higher in the record books had he played there all four years. He had to prove himself at the Ventura Community College first.