OSU men's basketball
Mr. Everything
Evan Turner may bring home a bevy of awards, but he' d prefer a team title
Tuesday, March 30, 2010 2:53 AM
By Bob Baptist
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
It was Evan Turner's goal to be in Indianapolis this weekend.
He will be.
But he will not have reached his goal, which was to take his Ohio State teammates with him to the Final Four.
"I wanted to be recognized as one of the great players to play here," Turner said, "but I wasn't really thinking too much about awards. I was just trying to do enough to make sure my team won, and to earn respect, and pretty much be comfortable with how I left school."
Turner leaves Columbus on Thursday for Indianapolis, where he will receive one national player of the year award and possibly two more during three days of festivities scheduled around the Final Four in Lucas Oil Stadium.
The Buckeyes' run ended last week with a three-point loss to Tennessee in a NCAA Midwest Regional semifinal. With a 29-8 record, they finished two wins short of making the Final Four for the second time in four seasons.
In turn, a seemingly slam-dunk decision to leave early for the NBA became more difficult for Turner, a 6-foot-7 junior point guard who is projected as one of the top two or three picks in the NBA draft in June.
Had Ohio State reached the Final Four, there was no doubt Turner was gone. Now,
"I'm prepared for anything," said his mother, Iris James. "It wouldn't surprise me if he comes back for another year."
Regardless of what he does, Turner's remarkable third season at Ohio State assured that his No. 21 will someday join the Mount Rushmore of retired numbers hanging above the court in Value City Arena.
The No. 11 worn by Jerry Lucas is up there. So are John Havlicek's No. 5, Jim Jackson's No. 22, Gary Bradds' No. 35 and Katie Smith's No. 30. All except Havlicek, a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, and Smith were voted national player of the year while at Ohio State.
Turner already has been announced as the winner of The Sporting News player of the year award and the Oscar Robertson Trophy, given by the U.S. Basketball Writers Association (USBWA) to its player of the year.
"To me, he's the perfect winner of (the) Oscar Robertson Award," said Mel Nowell, a member of Ohio State's 1960 NCAA championship team and a contemporary of Robertson, "because that was Oscar, a player who made his team much better."
Still to be announced are the Associated Press player of the year Friday in Indianapolis; the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) player of the year and the winner of the Naismith Trophy, both on Sunday in Indianapolis; and the winner of the Wooden Award on April 9 in Los Angeles.
Turner's top competition for each is Kentucky point guard John Wall, a freshman widely projected to be the No.1 pick in the NBA draft this year.
"Evan would get my vote," said Clark Kellogg, a former Ohio State All-American and now CBS' lead analyst on college basketball, "because he's been more consistently spectacular than anybody else."
Turner, who missed six games in December and January with two broken bones in his lower back, averaged 20.4 points, 9.2 rebounds and 5.97 assists in 31 games. Wall averaged 16.6 points, 4.3 rebounds and 6.5 assists. Each was named to the AP's All-America team yesterday; Turner appeared on 64 of 65 voters' first-team ballots, and Wall on 62.
"Pick your poison. They're both great players," said Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl, who faced Wall twice. "But Turner, I think, presents teams with more problems because Turner can do more things. He's a tougher matchup because of his size and his length."
Michigan State coach Tom Izzo compared Turner to Spartans legend Earvin "Magic" Johnson, who, as a 6-9 point guard, could go around or over opponents. Johnson averaged 17.1 points, 7.1 rebounds and 7.6 assists from 1977 to 1979.
Though such a record is not kept by the NCAA, Stats LLC has said that Turner's averages for points, rebounds and assists per game may be the best by one player since Larry Bird averaged 28.6 points, 14.9 rebounds and 5.5 assists at Indiana State during the 1978-79 season.
"I love multidimensional players," Izzo said. "When you can rebound, pass, score, you've got to defend some, that's a lot of things to be able to do.
"Definitely, he has been one of the more special players to come through the Big Ten in a long, long time."
Turner's success surprised most because this was his first season as a point guard, a position to which he was converted because Ohio State coach Thad Matta did not have a better option on the roster. Turner had not played point guard since junior high school.
"I can't remember any player of Evan's size that can slip inside of a defense and get the ball to the basket the way he does," former Ohio State All-American Bill Hosket said. "Even if they're saying don't let him get inside, he still gets inside.
"And what probably doesn't get enough discussion is his rebounding in a crowd. He gets to a rebound the same way he has the ability to get to the basket."
Georgia Tech coach Paul Hewitt called Turner a "rebounding magnet" before Tech and Ohio State met in the NCAA Tournament two weeks ago. Turner had 24 points, nine rebounds and nine assists in the Buckeyes' win.
He also had nine turnovers, an alarming total to basketball purists but a risk that Matta lived with because he felt the reward outweighed it. Turner averaged 4.4 turnovers per game, and twice he had 10.
"The greatest coaches are the ones who recognize that the only way you're going to get the best out of a player is to give him the freedom to take the risks to be great," said Nowell, of the 1960 OSU championship team.
"Evan is a risk-taker. If not given the opportunity to make mistakes, he wouldn't have been near what he is."
Nowell believes the reason Turner was more turnover-prone late in the season was fatigue.
"At times he was worn out, and I think it affected his alertness," Nowell said.
Turner averaged 35.8 minutes per game. He played 37 minutes or more in all but one of the last 15 games of the season, including 49 in a double-overtime victory over Illinois in the Big Ten tournament.
"I was fortunate when I played," Jim Jackson said. "I didn't have to carry the load. It made it easier on me. I could just be on the wing (most of the game) and do what I had to do, and late in the game, I could handle the ball. I wouldn't be worn down.
"Does he turn the ball over? Yes. But he's not a traditional point guard. He's a forward playing point guard, and it's his first year playing point guard full time. He's still experiencing that growth. You've got to take the good and the bad."
The good far outweighed the bad, which is why, after this weekend, Turner can look forward to his number someday joining Jackson's and the others' overhead.
"It'd be a great honor," Turner said. "They can't ever take that down. I would be excited for that to happen."
Many others would be excited if No. 21 stayed on the court here for one more season.
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