LSU guard Ralston Turner visited NC State over the weekend and it didn't take him very long to decide whether or not he wanted to leave the Tigers. He committed to the Wolfpack on Monday.
"I just felt comfortable with their staff," said Turner, who officially visited NC State with his mother this past weekend. "I had a relationship with Coach Gottfried coming out of high school. I felt pretty comfortable with everything, and decided to give them the nod.
"I was convinced after I sat down with Coach Gottfried and talked about basketball. That was pretty much the factor for me. The coaches are just good people and I had a good feeling around me."
Turner is not the Alex Johnson/Russell Wilson variety of transfer, so he will sit out the 2012-13 basketball season. He'll be eligible to play two seasons with NC State.
Just looking at Turner's KenPom profile, he has the potential to be a solid replacement for Scott Wood--not that their skill sets are identical, mind you, but Turner (6-6, 205) is a good outside shooter to go with his good size, and he could fill something approximating Wood's sniper role in 2014.
He's the same height as Wood and somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 pounds heavier. Over the course of his career, his FGAs have been split 50/50 between twos and threes, so he's also not quite the three-point specialist that Wood is. (For better or for worse.)
Turner mentioned in The Wolfpacker piece that he needs to work on his scoring off the dribble, and his two-point field goal percentages from his first two seasons reflect that fact (36.7 2FG% last year...woof). But his solid outside shooting is definitely something we'll be happy to have in Wood's absence. If he can get better off the dribble, that's gravy.