Sammie Puisis and L`or Mputu of USF women's basketball receive big honors

Two standout players on the USF women’s basketball team received some much-deserved positive attention Monday.

Forward L`or Mputu was named the American Athletic Conference Player of the Week and guard Sammie Puisis was named to the prestigious Ann Meyers Drysdale Award national midseason watch list.

In key wins for USF over UTSA and North Texas,  Mputu combined for 22 points on 10 of 14 shooting and 20 rebounds to pull the Bulls within one game of first place in the conference.

Mputu is a senior from Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She transferred to USF last season after two years at Eastern Florida State College, where she earned NJCAA Division I All-America second team honors.

Mputu is the second Bull to earn an AAC Player of the Week nod this season. Puisis earned the league honor on December 23.

Puisis, a graduate student from Mason High School in Ohio, transferred to USF two years ago from Florida State. She has made a strong comeback since missing most of last season because of a serious knee injury.

She leads USF in scoring with 14.4 points per game, including 67 3-pointers. That represents 54.4 percent of the Bulls’ total number of 3-point goals.

Puisis is ranked 5th nationally in 3-pointers made and 12th in 3-pointers made per game.

The Ann Meyers Drysdale Award honors the women's national player of the year as chosen by member of the U.S. Basketball Writers Association. The winner will be announced in April at the Women’s Final Four in Tampa.

USF is the host school.

Former Iowa star Caitlin Clark won the award last year.

Ann Meyers Drysdale was a trailblazer in women’s basketball. She was the first high school player to make the United States national team and the first woman to receive a full athletic scholarship to UCLA.