Media honors Queta as DPOY, Merrill 1st Team All-MW

Although the official Mountain West end-of-season awards will be dolled out Tuesday morning, the same awards were handed out Monday morning by vote of the media. The 11-person panel honored three Aggies with various awards. Most notable among them is Neemias Queta repeating as Defensive Player of the Year despite only playing 19 games this season. Sam Merrill did not repeat as Player of the Year, but did make the First Team. Queta and Justin Bean were both on the Second Team.

USU MBK: The 2019-20 All-Mountain West Team voted on by the media that cover the league was just released. Neemias Queta is a repeat winner as Defensive Player of the Year. Sam Merrill is on the 1st team, Queta and Justin Bean are on the 2nd team.

— HJ Sports (@hjsports) March 2, 2020

These results aren’t the ones that will go down in the history books, but can be a good gauge as to how the final results end up. Last year’s media awards predicted four of the five First Team Selections, and each of the individual awards — Player of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year, Newcomer of the Year, Coach of the Year, Freshman of the Year and Sixth Man of the Year. The 2017-18 media awards were less accurate — also four of five First Team players though only four of the six individual trophies — but were still a good barometer.

Queta, who became the second Utah State player to win a conference DPOY trophy last year, would become the first to do it twice in an Aggie uniform. He would be the third in Mountain West history to win it outright on two different occasions along with Khem Birch of UNLV and Justin Williams of Wyoming (Skylar Spencer, SDSU, and Marcus Banks, UNLV, both have two DPOY awards but were co-winners for one of their respective years).

Merrill, with a selection to the All-MW First Team, would join eight other Aggies — Dean Hunger (Big West 1979-80), Greg Grant (1985-86), Eric Franson (Big West 1995-96) Marcus Saxon (Big West 1997-98), Shawn Daniels (Big West 2000-01), Nate Harris (Big West 2004-05), Jaycee Carroll (WAC 2007-08) and Tai Wesley (WAC 2010-11) — as players that were two-time First Team selections to their respective conferences. Merrill would be the first to accomplish the feat in USU’s Mountain West era.

Should Bean be selected to the conference’s second team (or third team), it would be his first award/honor from the Mountain West in his career.

Twitter: @thejwalk67