evan turner

DeMarcus Cousins (Kentucky)

Derrick Favors (Georgia Tech)

Wesley Johnson (Syracuse)

Evan Turner (Ohio St)

Other (Aldrich, Aminu, Monroe, etc..)

While the NCAA Tournament is ultimately about team success, you can't win games without star players. But which players will be the heroes of the 2010 NCAA Tournament? Look below:

Based loosely on the quarterly Collegehoops.net Top 100, I rank the 65 best players in the 2010 NCAA Tournament.  This is not a fantasy stats ranking, although many of the players listed put up monster numbers. This is also not an evaluation based on pro talent-level, but a ranking of the best players right now.

Player of the Year Evan Turner and super-freshman John Wall highlight CollegeHoops.net's 2010 All-America teams. Turner averaged 19.5 ppg, 9.4 rpg, and 5.8 apg while helping Ohio St finish tied atop the Big Ten standings. Wall averaged 16.8 ppg and 6.2 apg, helping lead Kentucky to an impressive 29-2 record and an SEC title. They are joined on the First Team by Wall's teammate DeMarcus Cousins, Villanova leader Scottie Reynolds, and Big 12 Player of the Year James Anderson.

It's March and everyone's talking about college basketball. Is your team on the bubble?

While all the talk is about teams and brackets and seeds, let's not forget about some of the top individual players who hope to lead those squads deep into the NCAA Tournament.

So let's get started with my five leading candidates to win the coveted Naismith Award, which honors the best player in men's college basketball:

Last year, the debate for the 2008-09 Naismith National Player of the Year was effectively ended sometime in mid-January 9 (or maybe even sooner), when it became clear that Oklahoma's Blake Griffin was far and away the best player in the country. He was a double-double machine who became a nightly fixture on “Sportscenter's Top 10” for his rim-rattling dunks, and he led the Sooners to a 30-6 record and the Elite Eight. Although they would fall short of a championship, there was no question that he was the most dominant player in the nation.

In the fickle world of high-profile sports, the Purdue Boilermakers are now my favorite college basketball team.

 

Just kidding. As you know, I've been crushing on Ohio State for a while and since the Buckeyes (20-7, 10-4 Big Ten) lost a game they should have won at West Virginia last month, they've bounced back so impressively that I thought there was no team in the country playing better than them.

Evan Turner wasn't necessarily a highlight reel Sunday, but his overall play was instrumental yet again in Ohio State's most recent triumph.

 

The visiting Buckeyes blasted a pretty good Illinois team riding a five-game winning streak, including a pair of victories over Big Ten heavies Michigan State and Wisconsin.

 

James Anderson (Ok St, 22.2 ppg)

Rotnei Clarke (Arkansas, 28.2)

LaceDarius Dunn (Baylor, 22.8)

Landry Field (Stanford, 23.0)

Luke Harangody (ND, 26.2)

Quincy Pondexter (Washington, 24.0)

Klay Thompson (Washington St, 25.4 ppg)

Evan Turner (Ohio St, 20.6)