Since we began seeing players remain in school for shorter and shorter stints, polished wing scorers have been in decidedly short supply.

Evan Turner is one of the better ones we have watched develop during his three seasons at Ohio State, but I feel his draft stock represents a lack of other quality options in the 2010 class. Beyond Turner, there is a big drop off in terms of big scoring wings in a draft more heavily populated by bigs and combo forwards.

Turner is having an outstanding year where he has impressively returned from an in-season back injury and has displayed his versatility and scoring skill in what has mostly been a weak year for college basketball.

Turner can absolutely create his own shot off the dribble with a variety of elusive crossovers and spins. In a manner in which you like and admire, he is cocky and self-assured in the halfcourt when breaking someone down in isolation.

He is truly dynamic and inventive when creating for himself, with an extensive bag of tricks as a scorer and he has the skill with his shot, particularly in the mid-range to capitalize. Turner is as crafty off the dribble as any shooting guard that I’ve seen come out of college since Brandon Roy. He is a great finisher when he has enough space near the bucket to use his keen touch off the glass with either hand.

The fact that few players beyond Kobe, LeBron, Wade, Carmelo and Roy can consistently create their offense off the dribble in isolation is more of a statement about the quality of NBA defenses than it is an indictment on the dearth of scorers. Defenses very quickly adapt and create a detailed scouting report on individual players and though he will still be a tough cover in isolation, I don’t think it will be long before Turner is neutralized if he is a team’s primary scorer.

Unlike that collection of All-Star scorers, Turner doesn’t get as many buckets in the paint and at the rim, which is at least in part due to his relatively modest athleticism. He is very capable of making high degree of difficulty shots, whether it is a teardrop or using his body to draw contact and guard the ball in the air. I simply don’t see the type of lift or fearlessness to really climb the ladder on defenders his size or bigger. Even in college man-to-man defenses, Turner lacks the capacity to impose his will on opponents.

Because of this and where he’s likely to be drafted, I don’t see any real home run potential for the team that selects Evan Turner.

That is not to say that I’m not an admirer of his game and don’t expect him to be a productive NBA player, I just would have felt far more comfortable drafting him in 2009 in the late teens, early twenties rather than high in the lottery in 2010. I don’t feel he is good enough to warrant having the ball in his hands as he does at Ohio State and he can quickly disappear unless he becomes a vastly improved spot-up shooter.

Contributing to my modest expectations for Turner (again relative to draft projection) is his staggering decrease in 3-point percentage. I think it is largely a reflection of a lack of attempts and defenders constantly shadowing him, but he also has flawed fundamentals.

Turner will get too much of his guide hand flicking into his shot, which has undoubtedly contributed to the frequency of his misses that are significantly off the mark. This left hand opens up and faces the basket instead of staying at a 90-degree angle. His follow-through and release on his shooting hand, however, are very solid.

The guide hand becomes a little quieter when he attempts his mid-range jumpers and this is why we his efficiency jumps to a point where he is such an impressive prospect when combined with his height of skill off the dribble. He does a really good job of elevating for his mid-range shot quickly and explosively, yet in a controlled and balanced way.

Turner plays point guard for Ohio State in a similar ball-dominant way as Tyreke Evans did for Memphis last season, or more closely to Joe Johnson in his first year or two with the Hawks. His ballhandling and poise is good enough to run the point, but his vision and anticipatory senses as a passer are about average for a shooting guard and well below average if we want to consider him as a point guard.

His assist/turnover ratio is worse than I would like it, but more of his turnovers are as a scorer off the dribble rather than errant passes. Turner is rather simplistic in his passes and will make an occasional nice dish for a lay-up or dunk, but he’ll also mistakenly not feel the rotation of the defense stepping into his intended passing lane. There is nothing too bad about his passes, but they aren’t particularly crisp or well placed and he is in no way whatsoever creating easy buckets for teammates the way John Wall does.

Turner rebounds the ball at an excellent clip for a player his size and a lot of that should translate to the next level, though it will of course dip and a lot of his success is situational specifically to Ohio State and the Big Ten.

Defensively, Turner is a little behind where a third-year college player should be. He still gets spun around sometimes in help defense and his recognition of where to rotate is far from decent.

On-ball, he should eventually be adequate but he lets his man dribble to lose him too easily; he does not project to be lockdown in any kind of way unless he undergoes a significant reinvention. The versatility he brings offensively does also apply here with his capability to guard wings of varying size, as well as most point guards not named Ty Lawson.

While in the midst of studying Turner, I went back to old clips of Wade and Roy from when they were in college to compare the similarities and differences. The principal difference I saw reiterated what I found initially with a significant gap existing in terms of explosiveness as a finisher at the bucket and also as a passer.

But he is on par with those two players with the dribble and from about eight feet to 18 feet, which is still rarefied company and is why Even Turner is such a valued and desired prospect.