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Men's Basketball
Turner Scores 32 to Lead Bucks past Pesky Hawkeyes
By Brandon CastelCOLUMBUS – Evan Turner didn’t just have the answer for everything Iowa tried to do Sunday, he was the answer as Ohio State won its seventh straight game in Big Ten play.
The Hawkeyes (8-16, 2-9 Big Ten) did what they do best to stay in the game against the 13 th-ranked Buckeyes (18-6, 8-3) in their second meeting of the season, but Turner did what he does to put them away in a 68-58 win at Value City Arena in Columbus.
“We probably saw about what he is,” an awestruck Todd Lickliter said after the game.
“It’s not unique to us what happened. He was good tonight.”
With teammates William Buford and David Lighty struggling to find their shot (combined 3-of-14 from the floor); Turner took over the game in the second half, scoring 20 of his game-high 32 points over the final 20 minutes of the game.
“You look at Evan’s performance tonight, he had some special plays out there,” OSU Head Coach Thad Matta said of his star junior.
“That rates up there with the best I’ve seen from him with his all around game.”
Along with going 12-of-22 from the floor, Turner was 8-of-11 at the free throw line while grabbing seven rebounds and dishing out five assists. He had four steals and zero turnovers in 40 minutes, and could easily have posted double-digit assists had his teammates not shot 10-of-27 from the field.
“The great thing about Evan is if they close the gap, he’ll find guys,” Matta said.
“He got rolling there and we stuck with him.”
At one point, Turner scored 14 of Ohio State’s 15 points over a six-minute stretch late in the second half that concluded with the 6-foot-7 point guard knocking down six straight free throws to put the game on ice.
“It’s cool to see the ball go through the net. For a minute you feel unstoppable. You feel like you can do almost anything,” Turner said after the game.
He was not, however, in agreement with his coach on the 32-point performance being one of his best of the season.
“I don’t think so. I missed a lot of shots,” said the humble frontrunner for National Player of the Year, " despite the fact it tied his career-high for scoring.
“I prefer the triple-double games,” he said.
He fell three rebounds and five assists shy of his third triple-double of the season thanks in big part to the fact his teammates shots 2-of-12 from behind the arc and just 45 percent from the floor against the Hawkeyes.
Classmate Jon Diebler accounted for both of Ohio State’s three-pointers in the game as he was the only other Buckeye to score in double figures. Lighty went 0-for-4 from the floor with three misses from long range, but finished with nine points thanks to a 9-for-10 night at the free throw line.
“It wasn’t the prettiest win, but we won,” said Diebler, who scored 12 points on 5-of-10 shooting.
“With the race as tight as it is in the Big Ten, you have to take care of business on your own court.”
The Buckeyes led 32-27 at the half despite allowing Iowa to shoot 52 percent from the floor, including 4-of-5 from behind the arc. They tightened things up in the second half as they got out of the gates on a 9-2 run over the first four minutes. They extended the run to 15-6 in the first seven minutes as they took a 47-33 lead at the 12:55 mark.
“We put more pressure on the ball. They were shooting pretty good in the first half and we had to turn up our intensity in the second half to make things harder on them,” said Diebler, who also had four rebounds and three steals in 40 minutes.
But the pesky Hawkeyes would not go away. Despite shooting 4-of-15 from behind the arc in the second half, they cut Ohio State’s lead to single digits on four separate occasions late in the second half.
An Eric May three cut the game to nine points with 5:35 to play and the Hawkeyes had three good looks from behind the arc on possession that would have made it a six-point game. Instead, Matt Gatens, May and Cully Payne all came up empty on their long distance tries, which allowed Turner to grab the rebound and go coast-to-coast for a big layup to put OSU back in front by 11 points.
From there, the Buckeyes closed out the game by making their final eight free throw attempts to finish 22-of-27 from the charity stripe.
“I guess we flip-flopped on those,” Matta said of the team’s shooting performance behind the arc and at the line.
“That’s something we can hopefully continue to build on. Free throw shooting becomes huge at this time of year.”
The Buckeyes will get another chance to build on it Wednesday night when they travel to Bloomington, Ind. to face the Hoosiers (9-12, 3-6) at Assembly Hall (6:30 p.m. ET, Big Ten Network).
Game Notes:
*The Buckeyes are 15-0 in Value City Arena this season. The best record ever compiled at Value City Arena came during the 2007-07 season when the Buckeyes tallied a school-record 18 home victories.
*The team is shooting 53.8 percent from the field (385-of-715) and 42.3 percent from behind the arc (119-of-281) at Value City Arena this season.
*They shot only 44.9 percent from the field (22-of-49) and 15.4 percent from behind the arc (2-of-13) against Iowa Sunday.
*Ohio State has won six of the last seven games agaisnt Iowa, including a 65-57 victory in Iowa City earlier this season.
*Thad Matta is now 7-3 against Iowa. He is 63-32 (.663) in Big Ten games, the highest percentage of all-time at Ohio State.
*Evan Turner tied a career-high with 32 points to go with five assists and seven rebounds. He also tied his career-high with 21 shot attempts.
*Turner passed John Havlicek and Jerry Siegfried for 26th place on OSU's all time scoring list (1,239 points).
*William Buford went 3-of-10 shooting, but finished with nine points and a team-high nine rebounds.The-Ozone Mall
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