No player has affected the fortunes of a college basketball team much like Evan Turner of the Ohio State Buckeyes this season. We linked to an article yesterday about the validity of Turner’s Player of the Year candidacy this season courtesy of The Sporting Blog. Now, we are back to look at what makes the junior out of Chicago so successful on the court and how that will determine his future NBA playing style.
First of all, one thing that has truly impressed me as well as the Ohio State faithful has been the resiliency of Turner this. The 6’7″ guard/forward fractured his spine in a horrible fall to the court back on December 5th, where it was proclaimed he would miss up to eight weeks. Lo and behold then, Turner returned to the court on January 6th and two games after that, played all 40 minutes while scoring a season-high 32 points to lead the Buckeyes to a huge road upset victory over the #6 ranked Purdue Boilermakers.
The team struggled mightily in his absence, going just 3-3 with losses to Butler, Wisconsin and even Michigan. Since that point in time, the Buckeyes have surged back into the Big Ten race with another important battle Sunday at #11 ranked Michigan State.
For the season now, the Buckeyes are 20-7 and entered the week ranked #9 in the nation by the Associated Press. Purdue returned the favor with a road victory in Columbus earlier this week but the Bucks have a chance to maintain ground in the conference race with their performance on Sunday this week.
Digging into the statistics behind Turner and Ohio State’s success, the premier Web site for basketball information is Ken Pomeroy’s blog, rankings and scouting reports at kenpom.com. Here, based on a complicated series of formula, Pomeroy ranks Ohio State as the ninth best team in the land due to their adjusted efficiency differential. All seven of the team’s losses have occurred against teams ranked in the top 72 of Pomeroy’s rankings, a big reason for the favorable spot in the top ten.
On a team that ranks in the bottom 10 in the country out of 347 Division 1 basketball schools in terms of bench minutes played, Turner is the reason why the season has remained so successful already. Just looking at his per-game statistics is a thing of beauty: 19.5 points, 9.2 rebounds, 5.8 assists, 1.9 steals, 0.8 blocks and 55.2% field goal shooting in 33.6 minutes. For some introductory comparisons, not a single player currently averages that many points, rebounds and assists per game in the entire NBA.
Looking more in-depth to the statistics provided by Pomeroy on his site, you will notice that Turner ranks fifth in the country in percentage of possessions used. That proves how much of a focal point of this offense that he is, being a part of over one-third of Ohio State’s possessions so far. Turner is in the top 200 in the nation in efficiency field goal percentage, true shooting percentage, steal percentage and fouls drawn per 40 minutes. More impressively, he is 101st with 30% of the team shots taken, 29th with a defensive rebound rate of 25.2% and second with an assist rate of 39.0.
The thing that first stands out among these numbers is the combination of efficiency, rebounding and assists. In the NBA today, truly only LeBron James combines all those forces into an unstoppable beast on the basketball court in a way similar to Evan “The Villian” Turner. In fact, if you look at Turner’s defensive rebound rate and assist rate, he is the only qualified player in NCAA to rank in the top 100 in both categories. And he just happens to be in the top 30 in both (nickname via Mark Titus/Club Trillion).
Comparing Turner’s defensive rebound rate to the NBA, and his production would rank 19th, tied with Boston’s Kendrick Perkins, while his assist rate would trail only Dallas Mavericks All-Star Jason Kidd. It is pretty evident by all of these standards that the way Turner is tearing up the country this season is very unique for any basketball player. He is certainly no outside shooter but for essentialy “small forward” the combination of a 56.7% efficiency field goal and 59.6% true shooting is almost LeBron-esque.
Over the past several seasons, many prospects have made the leap from the NCAA game to the NBA after posting incredibly rare and efficient statistical seasons. Recent examples such as Pittsburgh’s DeJuan Blair, Kansas State’s Michael Beasley, Florida’s Marreese Speights, Davidson’s Stephen Curry, Texas’s Kevin Durant, and UCLA’s Kevin Love all jump to mind in terms of players who impressed scouts and statisticians alike with their collegiate production.
Evan Turner sits currently as the odd-on favorite for the Player of the Year award in college basketball this season and with the way the Buckeyes are playing, they might have some success in March as well. But by the time Turner’s playing days are over, expect him to have a few more trophies to add to his mantle.
(Photo above from Sports Illustrated via ICON SMI)