College Basketball's Player of the Year: Evan Turner or John Wall

Andy Staples from si has a great article on the p.o.y. debate in college basketball between Wall and Turner. I have to go with Turner, not just because I love the Bucks, but there is no other player in college basketball that does more for his team and means more to his team than Evan Turner. John Wall is an excellent player, but he has another frosh playing along side him that is just as good. He has better talent all around him except for his crooked coach. Kentucky would still be a tournament team without Wall.(that is not taking anything away from him) Ohio State would not be a tournament team without Evan Turner. What do you guys think?




Ohio State's Turner deserves POY honors for well-rounded dominance
www.si.com Andy Staples
How good is Evan Turner? Lately, he's been causing me to tune into games I should really have no interest in watching, like last week's Ohio State-Penn State contest. The Nittany Lions were 2-12 in the Big Ten at the time. The Buckeyes pretty much controlled the entire second half. Yet I couldn't stop watching. I wanted to see what Turner would do next.
At one point early on, he throws an inbounds pass in under his own basket, immediately takes the ball back and flies down the baseline for a slam. During one early-second-half span, he feeds teammate David Lighty for a dunk, then runs back down court and blocks Penn State star Taylor Battle. Moments later, off a missed Penn State shot, Turner races down court and leaves two defenders in the dust for a layup.
And then there are the jump shots -- all sorts of jump shots. On one, he takes a pass on the wing, makes a crazy spin move to ditch Battle and puts up a floater. Penn State eventually cuts a 17-point deficit down to four with 3:30 left, but you know what's coming next. Two straight possessions, two straight Turner pull-up jumpers. Ballgame.
Final tally: 25 points, seven rebounds, seven assists, three steals, two blocks.
Though he makes even the most mundane game exciting, Ohio State's do-everything junior won't win Player of the Year honors on highlights alone. John Wall can go toe-to-toe in that department. Turner deserves it because he's the most complete player in the country, the most valuable to his team and the most productive all-around guard the sport has seen in years.
You have to go back to 2004 to find the last time a point guard, St. Joe's star Jameer Nelson, won the Naismith Trophy. Lately the hardware's been dominated by power forwards like Tyler Hansbrough and Blake Griffin. Those guys were ballers, no question, but their games were more workmanlike. Lots of bullying inside the lane to grab rebounds and get fouls.
It's been a treat this year to watch Turner and Wall do their thing in the open floor, and they're both electrifying players. The difference is, Turner does more things in more areas over the course of 40 minutes.
He averages 19.5 points, 9.4 rebounds, 5.8 assists and 1.8 steals. Consider: He's a 6-foot-7 point guard who leads his conference in rebounding. Not only that, he's No. 1 in scoring and No. 2 in assists, making him the only Big Ten player in the past 26 years to rank in the top three in all three major categories.
Just for kicks, he's also second in steals, fifth in field-goal percentage (. 538) and eighth in blocked shots (0.9 per game).
And did I mention he's one of just two players in the country (the other, Marshall's Hassan Whiteside) to post two triple-doubles?
Clearly, the guy's got more than enough credentials to qualify for Most Outstanding Player. We also have certifiable proof why he's the sport's Most Valuable Player.
Ohio State, 24-7, currently sits in first place in the Big Ten. Take away Turner, however, and the Buckeyes are an NIT team. We know this because early in the season, Turner suffered, quite literally, a backbreaking injury.
Ohio State was 7-1 when Turner crashed to the floor following a dunk against Eastern Michigan on Dec. 5, fracturing the second and third lumbar vertebra in his spine. He missed six games, during which the Buckeyes went 3-3, including losses at Wisconsin and Michigan in their first two league games. Since his return, Ohio State has gone 14-3 and is seen as a potential Final Four team.
Turner has some fine complementary players around him in William Buford, Jon Diebler, David Lighty and Dallas Lauderdale, but they pale in comparison to Wall's supporting cast at Kentucky, which includes two fellow projected lottery picks (DeMarcus Cousins and Patrick Patterson). Without Wall, the Wildcats wouldn't be a front-runner for the national championship -- but they'd probably be in the discussion with that kind of talent.
Wall is akin to what freshman star Derrick Rose was to Memphis' 2008 national runner-up squad: the cherry on top of what was already a very tasty sundae. Even without Rose, the Tigers had reached the Elite Eight a year earlier with largely the same cast of players.
Turner plays more the part that his fellow Chicago native, Dwyane Wade, did at Marquette in 2003 -- a guy so talented he could almost singlehandedly lead an otherwise pedestrian team to the Final Four.
With that in mind, the player of the year race between Wall and Turner figures to be no easier a decision than an NBA general manager would have right now if he had a choice to sign Rose or Wade. You can't go wrong either way.
But the question here isn't, who's more talented? It's, who's been more outstanding during the 2009-10 season? Turner has scored more, rebounded more, shot better and notched as many steals while tallying slightly fewer assists. No other player in the country does so many different things so well.






Uncanny ability to destroy defenses makes Wall America's top player
www.si.com Andy Staples
I took my time working my way to the court in the back corner of the Riverview Park Activities Center in North Augusta, S.C., in July 2008. I'd spent the first few hours of my first Peach Jam tournament watching some surefire future stars. I'd seen DeMarcus Cousins. I'd seen Xavier Henry. I'd even seen Seantrel Henderson, who would become a top recruit in football.
Still, every coach I spoke to asked the same question. Have you seen John Wall yet?
So I finally made my way to that back-corner court, and there he was. At first glance, without a ball in his hand, the Raleigh, N.C., native didn't look so special. Sure, he was a 6-foot-4 point guard, but unlike Cousins and Henry, he didn't already look like a full-grown man. Then Wall brought the ball up the court.
He dribbled to the top of the key and paused. (Sound familiar, Kentucky fans?) He locked eyes with his defender, who stared back with the same look the wildebeest usually gives the lion. Wall spotted an opening, and he attacked. In what seemed like one fluid motion, Wall was at the rim. I don't remember if he dunked, if he dropped in a layup or if he passed to an open teammate for an easy bucket. It didn't matter. He'd already destroyed the opposing defense. The basket itself was an afterthought.
Surrounding the court were coaches from every conference in America. Even the most stoic among them couldn't suppress a smile or a head shake when they saw Wall move from top of the key to tin faster than the lightning strikes from the summer storm outside.
I wondered how Wall's game would translate at a higher level. He certainly appeared to play at a different speed than his elite classmates, but would a good college team be able to contain him? We know now that good college teams cannot contain him. We know now that he still appears to play at a different speed than everyone else on the court.
That's why the 2010 NBA Draft Lottery may as well be called the John Wall Sweepstakes. It's also why Wall is the nation's most outstanding college player this season.
We'll ignore the fact that most NBA general managers would saw off a limb for the right to select Wall. We'll also ignore the dance craze sweeping the nation. The college basketball Player of the Year should win the award for what he did this season, not because of his professional potential or because of his ability to incite a coast-to-coast fad. Based on numbers alone, the choice probably would have to be Ohio State's Evan Turner. But before you hand Turner -- a worthy candidate, to be certain -- the Player of the Year Award, ask yourself one question.
This is the same question I posed to myself before I cast my ballot for the Heisman Trophy, and it works for any Most Outstanding Player award in a team sport. If you were starting a college team from scratch and the only information you had to work from was what you've seen this season, who would you pick first?
I'd pick Wall, and it wouldn't be close.
Wall is an excellent passer, a pretty good rebounder and a decent defender, but his ability to make a defense collapse into itself like a dying star makes him the best player in the country.
Sometimes, an athlete can be so much better than everyone else at one particular facet of the game that he tilts the odds in favor of himself or his team. The object of tennis is to hit the ball past an opponent, so a player with an unreturnable serve would be favored to win every match, even if his ground strokes were only above average. A golfer so proficient with his putter that he never, ever three-putts would keep himself in every tournament in spite of his average driving distance.
The object of basketball is to put the ball through the basket, and Wall, because of his preternatural ability to slice into the lane and make a defense implode, is better than anyone else in the country at making it easy for his team to put the ball in the basket. Sure, he can improve the other facets of his game, but even if he never does, he is so superior at this one critical skill that night-in and night-out, he is the nation's most dangerous offensive player.
He's also the most valuable. While Turner's value to his team is undeniable, Wall probably doesn't get enough credit for Kentucky's metamorphosis. Obviously coach John Calipari and Cousins and junior forward Patrick Patterson have played large roles, but the primary reason Kentucky has turned from an NIT team to a likely No. 1 seed in the space of 11 months is Wall. Without Wall, the Wildcats would be a good team. They almost certainly would make the NCAA tournament, but they wouldn't be special. With Wall, Kentucky is great, even without a legitimate long-range threat.
Remember, North Carolina doesn't win the national title last year without point guard Ty Lawson, whose speed decimated defenses and opened up the offense for Tyler Hansbrough, Wayne Ellington and everyone else. Wall is a taller version of Lawson -- on rocket fuel.
Wall leads the Wildcats in scoring, with 17.0 points a game. He leads the SEC in assists, with 6.17 a game. Want a better stat line? In the final two minutes of Kentucky's first 29 games, Wall scored 62 points in 66 minutes while shooting 60 percent with only four turnovers. The numbers don't tell the whole story, though. Remember, Turner's numbers are better than Wall's. Of course, take away Cousins and Patterson and fellow freshman Eric Bledsoe, and Wall would score more points and grab more rebounds than he has. Turner posts huge numbers because he must. Wall's supporting cast is far more talented, so he doesn't have to win games single-handedly most of the time.
But guess who has the ball when Kentucky needs to score? When the Wildcats escaped Mississippi State with an overtime win last month, Wall finished with 18 points, 10 rebounds and eight assists. Five points came in overtime. Wall did this by slicing up the Bulldogs' defense to the point that they had no other option but to foul him.
No other player in the nation can make a defense implode the way Wall can. Just as he did in AAU, he dribbles around the perimeter, hunting for a weak spot. As soon as he identifies it, he zips past the guards and into the lane. By now, at least three defenders are actively engaged in stopping Wall, which means at least two Kentucky players are wide open. Much of the time, Wall hits one of those open teammates for an easy basket. Other times, Wall just makes everyone in the opposing jersey look foolish.
Against Tennessee last Saturday, Wall darted toward the lane. Volunteers forward Kenny Hall had a sound idea. Wall was moving so fast. Certainly, he couldn't stop or change direction. So Hall broke down at the elbow and waited for Wall to plow him over for an obvious charge. Wall planted one foot and spun around Hall and into the paint. Once there, he rose. Then he flipped the ball over Vols forward Wayne Chism and into the basket.
Wall had moved up a level since that day on the back-corner court, but nothing had changed. He is still the best player on the floor and the best player in the country.

Ohio State's Evan Turner

Turner perseveres through tough times
great article from www.espn.com
Lost in her own grief on the night her son committed suicide, Barbara Moll reached for the ringing telephone and heard the sound of her own pain in the voice of a 16-year-old boy.
He was so overwrought, she could barely make out what he was saying, sobbing so hard it took her a minute to figure out who it was that was calling.
Nearly five years to the day later, Moll flips on the television and sees that same boy. He is the picture of strength and confidence, a chiseled 6-foot-7 point guard turning NBA scouts' heads and breaking college opponents' ankles.
But Moll immediately can see past the glory of today to the pain of yesterday.
Evan Turner wears No. 21 at Ohio State. It's the same number Barbara's son, John, wore in the last season of his life.
"He told me he tried to get that number in his junior year of high school when he moved up to varsity, but couldn't," Moll said. "So when I saw him at Ohio State, I knew."
In the first two weeks of the college basketball season, no one has skyrocketed out of the gate quite like Turner. Debuting with a triple-double against Alcorn State -- only the second in the history of the Buckeyes program -- he has posted a double-double in every game thereafter and is averaging an eye-popping 21.8 points, 14.8 rebounds and 6.0 assists per game.
To watch him play is to see effortlessness, a kid who is blessed with a buffet menu of skills. In last week's Coaches vs. Cancer Classic, Turner literally made the Madison Square Garden crowd "Ooh" and "Aah" when he left a Cal defender flat-footed.
To meet him is to discover a rarity, a considerate and polite old soul who lacks the pretentiousness and peacock preening that ordinarily comes part and parcel with the talent. When Turner's face graced the cover of various preseason magazines, he snatched up a handful to show his family; not to brag but because, as he put it, "It was the strangest thing in the world."
To hear his story is to understand why he is the way he is. This is not a silver-spooned athlete who dribbled his way through life without scars, indifferent to the people around him. He suffered and endured and worked.
On Dec. 11, it will have been five years since John Moll ended 16 years of a troubled life by stepping in front of a train. Nearly every year since, Turner has called Barbara Moll at least three times -- on Mother's Day, on John's birthday and on the anniversary of his friend's death.



"Some days it's hard," Moll said. "I look at Evan, and I think about John. He'd be 21 now, maybe in college. But as the mother of a troubled boy, who had hopes and dreams for her son that he didn't achieve, it helps to live vicariously through someone like Evan. He's a unique person, an outstanding young man, and that has nothing to do with the way he plays basketball."
Turner's mother, Iris, will tell you that on the day her son was baptized, something miraculous happened. It was a sensation she can't describe, just a feeling that her second son was destined to do something special.
Perhaps it was the simple miracle that Turner lived long enough to be baptized that made Iris believe he would leave a mark. The first 12 months of Turner's life were filled with such fear and anxiety, illness and hospitalizations, that Iris didn't even christen him until his first birthday.
"So many times, I thought he wasn't going to make it," Iris said as she watched her son play at the Garden. "People walk up to me now, strangers with articles or just to tell stories, and tell me how much they look up to my son, and I think, 'How far can this go?' For the first year of his life, I kept asking, 'Lord, when is he going to get better?'"
A strapping 10-pound baby at birth, Turner had chicken pox, pneumonia, asthma and measles before he celebrated a birthday. When a measles epidemic swept through Chicago in the winter of 1989, Iris found her baby so ill he couldn't even cry. She called a doctor who, presumably figuring she was exaggerating, suggested she come to the office. Guided instead by her mother's instincts, Iris took him to the emergency room.
"Doctors took one look at him and just took him away," Iris said. "They had tubes and machines and everything there in a second. He nearly died."
Turner survived the measles but had severe breathing problems. Surgery to remove his adenoids and tonsils eventually eased the struggles, but for the first year of his life, Turner slept on his mother's chest every night because when she put him on his back in his crib, he would almost stop breathing.
Continuing through his Job-like childhood, Turner survived being hit by a car as a 3-year-old (his mother saw him flip in the air and land on his head, but Turner walked away with just a concussion and stitches).
He also struggled to speak as a toddler. Saddled with oversize baby teeth and a difficult overbite, he was capable of talking, but only his older brother, Darius, could understand him. Even Iris would turn to Darius for interpretation and translation from the boy who called her "Bobba" because he couldn't say "Momma."



"I don't know what he would have done without Darius," Iris said of her two boys' special bond.
When Evan Turner was a sickly child, his mother Iris probably didn't think she'd be watching him play big-time college basketball one day.
Intense speech therapy helped Turner, but the sting of special classes and the frustration of not being understood left Turner reserved and insecure. "I'd be yelling, 'Darius, what does he want? What does he want?' and poor Evan would get so frustrated, he'd say, "Oh, nebber minb [mimicking the way Turner spoke]."
"I'm still shy, but I'm not insecure anymore," Turner said. "I just know how to hide it better. When I was little, I just didn't like being around big groups of people. I would just go outside by myself and play basketball. It was almost therapeutic."
Turner doesn't remember when he started playing basketball, but he references vintage film of his going at Darius on a Fisher-Price hoop when they were barely old enough to walk. He also vividly remembers sitting in his room as an eighth-grader, playing March Madness 2003.
"You could create your own team and of course, I made myself the best player on the team," Turner said. "I'm in my room, and Dickie V is yelling on the game, 'He's a PTPer, a diaper dandy, baby,' and my brother walked in. He said, 'You better make that happen someday.'"
Turner took the first step toward realizing his brother's charge at St. Joseph's High School in Chicago.
That's also where he met John Moll. The two had crossed paths on the summer circuit before and they became friends when Moll, whose life had been a series of trials, enrolled at St. Joseph's. Moll was more of a showboat than Turner, a kid who asked his parents whether he could let his hair grow, then let it get to 1970s Afro proportions.
Turner didn't know a lot about Moll's problems. He didn't know that middle-school experimentation with drugs made him both physically and verbally abusive to his parents; didn't know that his biological mother was a schizophrenic who gave him up for adoption; didn't know about the stay in a youth home for much of their freshman year. He just knew he was a funny kid, a tough defender and one heck of a point guard.
In retrospect, no one knew what was going on in Moll's head, not his parents or even the host of professionals who were working with him.
"He had counselors, psychiatrists, even a probation officer that he saw every week. And to a person, they said suicide was never on their radar screen with John," Barbara Moll said. "The only people more surprised than my husband and I were the professionals. No one saw this coming."
So when Turner found out that his friend and teammate had killed himself on that December day in 2004, he was destroyed.
"I was really worried about Evan at that point," Iris said. "He was in so much pain."
Said Turner: "It's not that I didn't accept it; I just didn't appreciate what it meant. His locker was right next to mine, and I remember thinking, 'He's never going to use that locker again.' I'd look at his desk and realize he wasn't going to sit in it. I kept thinking he'd come back. It took me a long time to really understand what it meant."



Turner doesn't know what compelled him to call Barbara Moll that night. His mom didn't suggest it. No one did. He just picked up the phone.
The conversation was brief, but it was the start of many. Even through tragedy, Barbara Moll still attended all of St. Joseph's games in that 2004-05 season, as well as the team banquet. She followed Moll's classmates through their final two years of high school and watched Turner develop into a bona fide Division I player who earned his own praise despite the constant attention heaped on fellow Chicago senior Derrick Rose.
Moll attended the Ohio State-Northwestern game in Evanston last season, and this year she signed up for Facebook, figuring it would be an easy way to keep in touch with Turner and another former teammate of Moll's, Mike Capocci at Northwestern.
Next year? Next year, she doesn't know what she'll do if Turner jumps to the NBA.
She's not alone.
Unlike a lot of parents who eagerly await their son's entrée into the NBA, Evan Turner's mom is nervous.
"As my mother would say, 'I'm happy he's living his dream,' but I worry because it is getting so close," Iris said. "It's a lot of responsibility."
But if anyone seems well-suited for the adjustment, it is Turner. He admits to being selective about his circle of friends and cautious with his decisions, all good traits for the NBA life.
And despite a breakout two weeks, he remains humble. Not only is he unimpressed with himself, he is downright stunned when you suggest that some eighth-grader could be sitting in his room, playing a video game, pretending to be Evan Turner.
"People show me magazines, and I think, 'Is that really me? On a magazine?'" Turner said. "It's just crazy. It's all kind of funny to me."
Turner is -- as Barbara Moll learned on the evening of Dec. 11, 2004 -- a good kid.
"I'm still stunned that he made that call," Moll said. "Adults don't want to make that call, and here he was, just 16. He amazed me. He still amazes me."