BOWLING GREEN — When Bowling Green held its senior day on March 6, Justin Turner was among the group honored during a pregame ceremony.
But where Turner actually plays next season is still up in the air.
Turner, Bowling Green's leading scorer and a back-to-back first-team All-Mid-American Conference selection, has spent four years at BGSU, but redshirted his first season due to injury. He has one more season of eligibility remaining, if he chooses to play another year of college basketball.
Turner said he wanted to go through senior day with teammates from his recruiting class — Dylan Frye and Ethan Good — plus Mike Laster and Marlon Sierra, the two junior-college transfers who were seniors this season.
The group helped Bowling Green to 43 wins during the past two years, the Falcons' first back-to-back 20-win seasons since the 1940s. Though he went through the ceremony, Turner said he has not yet decided on his future after the final three rounds of the MAC tournament were canceled last week due to the coronavirus.
"I haven't made any decisions. Right now, I'm still getting over what happened," Turner said by phone Wednesday. "In the next week or so, I want to weigh all options and just do whatever is best."
If he were to return to Bowling Green for another season, Turner would have a good chance to become the program's all-time leading scorer.
Turner passed former teammate Demajeo Wiggins, Nate Thurmond, and Walt Piatkowski, among others, during his junior season in 2019-20. He currently ranks seventh in program history with 1,595 points in 94 games, an average of just fewer than 17 points per game for his career.
He's 343 points behind current No. 1 scorer Anthony Stacey, who is now an assistant coach at Bowling Green. Turner scored 469 points this season despite playing no postseason games and missing six regular-season contests because of a hamstring injury.
Though he could continue one of the greatest individual careers in BG history next season, Turner said he always was most concerned with bringing the Falcons to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1968.
"I never really go into things thinking about individual accolades," Turner said. "What sits with me more is that I still haven't brought BG a championship. I feel like this was the year where we could've we could've made a run, won it all, see what we did in the [NCAA] tournament, and then let the chips fall where they may."
Turner, who turned 22 years old last week, will have options for his 2020-21 season.
Before his redshirt junior year, Turner entered his name into the NBA draft, but did not hire an agent to preserve his eligibility. After going through workouts and receiving evaluation from pro teams, Turner withdrew his name and returned to Bowling Green.
As a junior, Turner missed five weeks because of the a hamstring injury, but finished the year with averages of 18.8 points, 4.6 rebounds, and 2.5 assists for the Falcons. He shot 42.7 percent from the floor and 36.1 percent from 3-point range.
Pro prospects like Turner, however, face an unknown schedule in the coming weeks and months. The NBA became the first American sports league to suspend the season, and a resumption later this year likely would mean delays to team workouts, the NBA draft, and possibly NBA Summer League.
Turner, who is back in his native Detroit with the BG campus shut down, said he plans to stay updated on what comes next.
"I'm just seeing what people are saying, my coaches are saying, and looking at outside sources and talking to my family and things like that, then just staying updated with what's going on on the league side and the NCAA side," Turner said. "I'm really just taking it day-by-day and playing it by ear."
First Published March 18, 2020, 9:05 p.m.
