Buckeyes’ Evan Turner is a star on and off the court

BY: TOM TIMMERMANN (ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH) — When she doesn’t expect it, someone will come up to Iris James, the mother of Ohio State basketball star Evan Turner, and compliment her about her son. Only it has nothing to do with basketball.

“I just met a lady here on Friday,” James said Sunday afternoon in Milwaukee, after Ohio State had beaten Georgia Tech to advance to the Midwest Regional that starts in St. Louis on Friday.

“Her son had broken his back on the school playground. They reached out to the school and Evan had called her to talk to her son. I thought that was so great. I didn’t know. I never find out until parents come up to me and tell me, ‘You have such a great young man; he’s done this, he’s done that.’ He’s done a lot of different things. Evan can sympathize with that young man.”

Actions like that by Turner are typical. He wears No. 21 to honor a high school teammate, John Moll, who wore that number when they played together and who committed suicide when they were 16.

“He had dreams of playing big-time basketball,” Turner said. “He wasn’t fortunate enough to do it and I was, and this is a way to represent him. A lot of people loved him.”

Turner still calls Moll’s mother several times a year.

He has helped a teenager from Milwaukee who moved to Columbus, Ohio, adjust to life in the new city and serves as a father figure to him.

“He’s compassionate,” James said. “He’s just a great human being, and I’m not saying that because he’s my son.”

Ohio State coach Thad Matta has used “caring” and “sensitive” when describing Turner.

Those who know Turner off the court can tell you how great he is, but all you have to do is watch an Ohio State game to see that he’s one of the best players — if not the best — in the nation. The 6-foot-7 guard-forward can do whatever is needed of him on offense or defense. He has been named national player of the year by the U.S. Basketball Writers’ Association and the Sporting News and is the favorite to be named Naismith National Player of the Year on April 4.

During CBS’ NCAA coverage, Seth Davis of Sports Illustrated said that anyone who doesn’t vote for Turner for the player of the year shouldn’t be allowed to vote for player of the year.

“I’ve told anybody that’s listened,” UC Santa Barbara coach Bob Williams said before his team’s first-round game with Ohio State. “We’ve had the good fortune, we played North Carolina last year when they were the national champions. We played Kansas when they were like No. 3 in the country. We played Stanford when they were 4 in the country. We haven’t played against anybody that was like Evan Turner. … There’s really not a weakness in his game. He’s probably the most complete player … in my college tenure of being able to coach that I’ve had the opportunity to coach against.”

“He’s one of the best big guards I’ve seen in a long time,” Georgia Tech coach Paul Hewitt said.

What Turner can do was evident against Georgia Tech. He fought for a…..

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