Stew's top 20: No. 14 - Preston Medlin

Desmond Penigar, Nate Harris, Jaycee Carroll, Gary Wilkinson, Preston Medlin. Those are the names of each player under Stew Morrill to have averaged as high as 17 points per game in a single season. And out of each of them, only Penigar and Carroll did it as juniors, with Carroll being the only guy to do it twice.

Medlin pretty much one-upped everyone of them by doing it as a freaking sophomore in 2011-12! And he did it basically against opposing defenses that knew, "Stop Medlin and you stop the Aggies."

Even against those odds, it's hardly even arguable to say that Medlin had the best sophomore season of any of Morrill's Aggies. With 17 points, 4.4 rebounds and 3.4 assists per game, Medlin's 2012 season was easily one of the most well-rounded years put forth by a USU player under Morrill. He also delivered arguably the best single-game performance of of Morrill's tenure during Utah State's senior night game against Idaho with 32 points, eight rebounds and five assists. All of that was capped off by becoming just the second Utah State player ever to be named first-team all-conference as a sophomore, joining only Nate Harris in that club.

And the thing that is largely overlooked at this point is that back when Medlin was a true freshman in 2009-10, he was a an ace off the bench for the entire first half of that season before Brian Green broke out like he did. Most memorable of that whole run was his performance against BYU where Medlin nailed two huge 3-pointers to really swing momentum fully into USU's favor in the second half, as well as drawing a big loose-ball foul on BYU's Chris Miles. For a guy who is only about to enter his junior year, he's already had a hell of a career.

One could argue that Medlin deserves to be higher up because of how great his 2012 season was. To that, the only knock is that the team's success was a far cry from what a handful of other players were parts of. Even if their seniors seasons didn't have numbers near comparable to Medlin's sophomore campaign, guys ahead of Medlin on here either won a lot more games, or just have multiple impressive seasons to Pre-Med's one and a half.

Even despite sparse playing time the later half of his freshman year, Medlin still looks primed to put forth an all-out assault on a whole load of career stat rankings at Utah State.

While No. 14 is where he is landing right now, Medlin could very well end up in the top three if we did this list all over again in two more years.