LOGAN — For Utah State guard Mason Falslev, an early-morning practice session last week was a bit of a role reversal.
A Cache Valley native, the Aggie standout grew up watching Sam Merrill play for USU, observing as Merrill refined his game during his four years in Logan and finishing his collegiate career in 2020 as Utah State’s second-leading scorer of all-time.
Merrill was selected in the second round of the NBA draft later that year, picked up a championship ring with the Milwaukee Bucks during the 2020-21 season, and spent time with the Memphis Grizzlies organization before playing his way into a more prominent role the past two seasons with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Merrill, who recently signed a new contract with the Cavs, returned to his alma mater last week, shooting around at the Wayne Estes Center for more than an hour before settling in to observe the current crop of Aggies during an early-morning practice session.
Needless to say, Merrill’s presence meant a lot to Falslev and was certainly inspiring for the other 14 Aggies — 10 of whom are new to the USU program, including five true freshmen — as they begin preparations for the 2025-26 season.
“I remember watching Sam all the time,” Falslev said. “So, it was pretty cool to come in here and watch him get a workout in. And, you know, that’s the dream. What he’s doing … playing in the NBA and doing amazing stuff.
“He’s a great guy on and off the court, so it’s cool to see him here.”
Utah State coach Jerrod Calhoun said Merrill, who had to leave midway through the practice session to make a tee time, did offer up one brutal comment before heading out for the golf course.
“(Merrill) said after five minutes, ‘That was more turnovers in five minutes than in a whole NBA practice,’” Calhoun noted.
Building from the ground up
Calhoun was certainly in no mood to dispute that observation. The Aggies were second in the Mountain West in scoring last season at 79.9 points per game, and he would clearly like to push that number higher in his second season in Logan. So, while associate head coach Eric Haut was pleased with USU’s defensive effort, Calhoun was less than thrilled by the carelessness of his team’s offense.
“You know, when you’re playing yourself, you’re never happy, right? And there were a lot of turnovers,” Calhoun admitted. “… But our guys will get better with time. You know, we’re trying to build this thing, really from the ground up.
“It’s a new year, it’s a new team, it’s a lot of new players, so we’re kind of back to the basics. But the attitudes, the connectivity, has been unbelievable. I feel really good two years in a row about the character of our team.”
Utah State went 26-8 last season and finished third in the conference, good enough to earn the Aggies a trip to the Big Dance in Calhoun’s inaugural season at the helm.
Following a 72-47 loss to UCLA in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, Calhoun was courted by other programs, most notably West Virginia, but he ended up not following in the footsteps of his predecessor Danny Sprinkle, who left for Washington after just one successful season.
“It’s a different feeling for sure,” Falslev said of starting the season with a familiar head coach for the first time in his collegiate career.
“But it feels good, you know?” added the junior, who redshirted under Ryan Odom in 2022-23. “I mean, that’s one of the biggest reasons why I stayed, is just because of the coaching staff. So, the reason I’m here is because of them.”
New-look Aggies
Following the graduation of 2024-25 leading scorer Ian Martinez (16.4 ppg), losing Falslev would have been a huge loss for the Aggies. But the junior guard, who got married in late May, elected to return to the program after averaging 15.0 points, 6.3 rebounds and 3.7 assists per game in his final season as a bachelor.
Utah State’s third-leading scorer, guard Dexter Akanno (8.1 ppg), also graduated after one season as an Aggie, while the fourth-leading scorer, point guard Deyton Albury (7.8 ppg), elected to transfer to Mountain West rival New Mexico. Albury received an extra year of eligibility thanks to the NCAA ruling in January that granted an additional season to athletes who played at a junior college.
That meant that Drake Allen, who started the season at point guard for the Aggies before giving way to Albury after suffering a separated shoulder in mid-December, also has another season of eligibility. Allen (7.0 ppg), Falslev, junior forward Karson Templin (7.4 ppg, 5.0 rpg), junior wing Tucker Anderson (5.8 ppg) and sophomore point guard Jordy Barnes (1.6 ppg) make up the quintet of returnees heading into the 2025-26 season.
Big man Aubin Gateretse (6.4 ppg, 4.2 rpg) graduated in April after starting 31 games in 2024-25, while the hero of Utah State’s win over TCU in the 2024 NCAA Tournament, forward Issac Johnson (3.7 ppg), decided to transfer to Hawaii following his junior season.
Forward Isaac Davis (2.1 ppg) also used the transfer portal to move on to Utah Valley after his freshman year at USU, where he’ll play alongside former Aggie teammate Braden Housley, who saw action in just three games last season before being sidelined by a season-ending injury.
In addition, guard Jaxon Smith (1.3 ppg) transferred to Fort Lewis College after three years in the USU program, and former Gonzaga forward Pavle Stosic moved on to Pepperdine after redshirting last season under Calhoun.
Heading into the spring, Calhoun and his staff had already secured the commitments of five highly regarded freshman recruits: guards Elijah Perryman and Brayden Boe; wings Kingston Tosi and Adlan Elamin; and forward David Iweze. But a couple of departures late in the transfer portal window led to a couple of last-minute additions to the roster, leaving the Aggies with an unlikely balance of five returning players, five incoming freshmen and five transfer athletes.
‘The skill has been tremendous’
“We’re having to teach them a lot about the game, but the length, the size, the skill has been tremendous,” Calhoun said about the fivesome making the jump from high school to Division I college basketball this season. “David Iweze is going to be a guy that is going to have an unbelievable career here. He’s 235 pounds. Elijah Perryman’s vision is incredible. He can really, really see the court and played for a great high school coach.
“And Adlan Elamin — the sky’s the limit. I mean, he’s 6-10, 6-11, and he can shoot 3s, he can cut, he can guard. He should be one of our better defenders. And Braden and Kingston have great upside, right? They’re wing players that can really shoot it.”
Utah State’s new veterans include, senior guard MJ Collins (7.4 ppg, 2.3 rpg at Vanderbilt in 2024-25); senior guard Kolby King (5.6 ppg, 3.9 rpg, 1.7 assists at Butler in 2024-25); fifth-year forward Garry Clark (14.9 ppg, 7.7 rpg at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi in 2024-25); junior forward Luke Kearney (8.9 ppg, 2.7 rpg at Air Force in 2024-25); and senior forward Zach Keller (2.8 ppg, 1.4 rpg at Utah in 2024-25).
“I’m really grateful that we’ve got five returning players; I think there’s a lot of coaches out there that don’t have that luxury, right?” Calhoun said. “I think they’re the most important guys in the program because they’ve been here, and they’ve helped establish what we do day in and day out.
“But we’ve got kind of a weird group, you know, with five returning guys, five freshmen and five transfers,” Calhoun added with a chuckle. “I don’t know if that’ll ever happen again, but yeah, 15 scholarships. Obviously, there’s going to be a lot more competition for playing time, but it’ll all work itself out. And I think this summer it’s going to be great. Kids want to have as many reps as possible, I just, I think you’ve got to be careful as a head coach of overdoing it.”
Getting reps
Calhoun said he recently spoke with Alan Bishop, a former Aggie football player and strength coach who is currently the director of men’s basketball sports performance at Houston, and he used some of Bishop’s advice when planning out his team’s limited practice schedule in June and July.
“We’re kind of modeling what Houston does,” Calhoun said, referencing the 35-win program that lost to Florida by two points in the 2025 national championship game. “I really picked Alan’s brain about a month ago about how we wanted to attack this summer. And all of our workouts have been really, really early.
“Our guys are getting up at 6 a.m., we’re in the gym or the weight room by 7. It’s been really, really good to see everybody on time. You saw the energy in this building for an early practice today. So, it’s been really good.”
Calhoun noted that Anderson, who had an up-and-down sophomore season, has probably added “about 17 or 18 pounds of good, solid muscle” since the 2024-25 season ended.
“You know, coming from Central Arkansas is a big difference from playing in the Mountain West,” Calhoun noted. “We’re expecting big things out of Tuck.
“And Luke Kearney has also been playing well,” Calhoun continued. “… It seems like he’s playing really confident, especially shooting the 3-point shot. Luke’s going to be really good. You talk about an unbelievable late addition. First of all, he’s played in this league. And coach (Joe Scott) really taught him how to cut. He’s a great cutter, and in our system, we’re going to run them on a lot of wide pins. I think Luke’s going to have a big year for us.”
King is expected to take over Albury’s role, joining Allen and Barnes primarily in the mix at point guard. The Florida native started his collegiate career at St. John’s in 2022-23, then averaged 10.4 points per game at Tulane as a sophomore in 2023-24 before transferring to Butler.
“It takes a lot,” King admitted when asked about what it takes to adjust to a new coach and a new team every year. “I’ve bounced around, and it’s a hard hand I’ve been dealt. It’s about getting used to the process, just trying to adapt as quickly and as fast as we can and start building now. In the long run, it’s going to pay off.”
Unlike last summer, the Aggies don’t have an offseason trip to Europe in August and that additional practice and game time to adjust to playing with each other as the program enters its final season as a member of the Mountain West. And while Calhoun did lose assistant coach Eric Daniels to Alex Jensen’s new staff at Utah, he recently secured the addition of a couple of USU veterans in assistant coach Johnny Hill and director of player personnel and analytics Curran Walsh.
A member of Danny Sprinkle’s Aggie staff in 2023-24, Hill spent last year at Illinois-Chicago, while Walsh, most recently an assistant coach at Denver, was a member of Craig Smith’s staff at both Utah State and Utah.
Fortunately, Calhoun knew just the right people to ask about bringing in Hill and Curran for second stints with the Aggies.
“You know, I think what’s special about Utah State is the coaching tree, right?” Calhoun said. “There’s a bunch of guys that loved their time in Logan, loved being here. So, when you talk to Coach Smith about Curran Walsh, and you talk to Danny Sprinkle about Johnny Hill, you get rave reviews.
“But it doesn’t stop there. What I like to do is I like to take a really deep dive beyond that. So, what I did is, I talked to Sam quite a bit about Curran. And I talked to Mason and K.T. (Templin) about Johnny. You know, players know real coaches. Players know coaches that are knowledgeable and have motors, and Sam and Mason and K.T. signed off on all these guys. And to me, this is a players’ program. I’ve got to listen to my players, and I thought we did a really good job in those hires.”
