defends William Paterson's Horace Jenkins
in the 1999 national semifinals in Salem, Va.
Jenkins earned first team honors
--but Brunson has the ring.
|
| Second-Team All-Decade Pick Merrill Brunson defends William Paterson's Horace Jenkins in the 1999 national semifinals in Salem, Va. Jenkins earned first team honors --but Brunson has the ring. |
Merrill Brunson, the only UW-Platteville player ever to win NCAA III national basketball player of the year honors, earned a spot on the d3hoops.com All-Decade Team.
Brunson earned national honors in 1999 after leading the Pioneers to their second straight NCAA III national championship and fourth in nine years. He averaged 18.8 points per game and shot 52.4 percent from beyond the three-point line, including an incredible 80 percent during the entire month of January.
He was the leading scorer in the 1998 national title contest, scoring 15 points in a 69-56 win over Hope College that completed the last undefeated season (30-0) in NCAA III history. Brunson earned the 1999 Final Four Most Outstanding Player Award after scoring 20 points in the 76-75 double-overtime win over Hampden-Sydney in what was Coach Bo Ryan’s final game on the Pioneer sideline.
"This is a tremendous honor for Merrill,” said Coach Ryan, now the head coach of the 14th-ranked Wisconsin Badgers. “In high school he played for a school (Richland Center) that was a rival to Platteville so he played against my sons a lot. He was a kid who played three sports, football, basketball and baseball, so I saw him develop over the years. He was a tremendous competitor and someone I definitely wanted in our program. Once he got to UW-Platteville that unbelievable competitive streak helped us win a lot of games and made him the player that he was."
Brunson is now the Platteville High School basketball coach and teaches at the Platteville Middle School.
D3hoops.com is celebrating a decade of NCAA Division III men's and women's basketball coverage this month by naming its All-Decade Teams. The Web site, which became the first piece of the D3sports.com network at the beginning of the 1997-98 season, honored five teams of five players each from the past 10 seasons.
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