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Mountain West Wire’s Player of The Year Watch list Results: POY and All-Conference Selections
The results are in, take a look at the awards and the 17th week’s results.
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The month of February made it a close one but the Player of the Year watch list results are in, and the winner is….
The staff at the Mountain West Wire wanted to do something a little different this year. We kept track of the top performers from teams around the Mountain West throughout the year and voted on who had the best performances that week.
The process churned out 17 weeks of results, highlighting multiple player’s performances in that time. Overall 31 different players received top-5 votes and every Mountain West team is represented on the list. But without further ado here we go.
[Editor note: As a staff there will be a one-time vote on these same awards, plus more, and it will be interesting to see if they are different because a one or two week surge would help them in these weekly rankings.]
Player of the year: Malachi Flynn, San Diego State (42 total points)
Malachi Flynn has been a major catalyst in the Aztec’s historic 2019-2020 season. His presence on the court this season for a Brian Dutcher team that reached twenty wins last season but lost it’s top-two scorers is more than impressive. Flynn’s leadership has led to a 28-1 (17-1 in MW) regular season finish, top-5 ranking, an at-large bid and maybe most importantly he’s helped make the players around him better.
His numbers weren’t eye popping, but were efficient and made an impact consistently on the best team in the Mountain West. He averaged 17.6 PPG, 4.4 RPG, 5.1 APG & 1.8 SPG in 29 games this season (all starts). Certainly an all-conference worthy stat sheet and his assists and steals per game totals were good enough to lead the entire conference in both categories. Flynn performed at a high level consistently throughout the season and had the best start of any in the conference and kept his level of play just high enough to fend off some other player’s late season surges for the award.
The dagger might have come this weekend in what looked like the battle for Player of the Year against Nevada and Wolf Pack guard Jalen Harris. Flynn helped his team obtain an 83-76 win while scoring 36 points on 13-20 made field goals (65%) while also grabbing 5 rebounds and dishing out five assists. This performance cemented Flynn as the inaugural 2020 Mountain West Wire’s Watch list Player of the Year. Congrats to Malachi and a special thank you to all who participated in the voting process throughout the year.
The rest of the All-Mountain West First team:
Jalen Harris, Nevada (35 Points)
Sam Merrill, Utah State (20 Points)
Derrick Alston Jr, Boise State(19 Points)
JaQuan Lyle, New Mexico (15 Points)
All-Mountain West second team:
Nico Carvacho, Colorado State (12 Points)
Bryce Hamilton, UNLV (12 Points)
Seneca Knight, San Jose State (10 Points)
Jazz Johnson, Nevada (9 Points)
Justinian Jessup, Boise State (7 Points)