Evan Turner left Columbus yesterday after cleaning out the apartment he shared with former Ohio State teammate Jon Diebler since last summer. Reminded of the photo he posted on Twitter last spring, showing clothes and shoes strewn around a couple of his player-of-the-year trophies, Turner said, "I'm going to hire a maid" after he moves into his new home in Philadelphia.

Before leaving, Turner made a guest appearance Wednesday at the Buckeye Stars basketball camp hosted by Mike Conley Jr. at Worthington Kilbourne High School. While he was there, he raved about the play of incoming freshman Jared Sullinger of Northland at the pickup games in Value City Arena this summer.

Conley, a former Ohio State point guard now with the Memphis Grizzlies, said Sullinger doesn't mind throwing a bad shot up on the backboard every now and then because he knows he can get the rebound over everyone else. He also sees Sullinger and Dallas Lauderdale able to play together because Sullinger is nimble enough to guard some smaller power forwards.

Springfield linebacker Trey DePriest, listed by Scout.com as the No.2 prospect in Ohio behind Ohio State quarterback recruit Braxton Miller of Huber Heights Wayne, is expected to choose between Ohio State or Alabama in a news conference at 5 p.m. today.

DePriest's visit to Alabama last weekend is a source of worry for Ohio State fans, but there are some signs in the Buckeyes' favor: Miller grew up in Springfield, and he and DePriest played football together in junior high. DePriest also attended the news conference where Miller announced that he would play at Ohio State, although he cautioned against linking his appearance with his eventual college choice.

New Blue Jackets coach Scott Arniel plans to meet with team captain Rick Nash to find out where the winger wants to play this season.

Nash, a natural left winger, moved to the right side of the top line last season, as favor to former coach Ken Hitchcock, to accommodate winger Kristian Huselius, who can't play on the right.

Unlike Hitchcock, Arniel is not wedded to keeping Nash and Huselius together, and if Nash elects to go back to the left side, that could elevate Jake Voracek to the top line. The way Voracek finished last season convinced lot of people that if he isn't ready for the top line, he will be soon.

Antoine Vermette and Derick Brassard will center the first two lines.

What helps this work is the flexibility of R.J. Umberger, who can play all three forward positions. Nikita Filatov is the wild card; the former first-round draft pick could challenge for a spot on the first two lines and create a good problem for Arniel.

Although Cincinnati Reds general manager Walt Jocketty has said that the club has nothing brewing in advance of the nonwaiver trade deadline Saturday, the St. Louis Cardinals are continuing to search for a starting pitcher.

Anyone who has been following the duel between Cincinnati and St. Louis in the National League Central knows that the right deal might tip the balance for the Cardinals.

Last week, it appeared that St. Louis might have been able to swing a deal for Houston veteran Roy Oswalt, but there didn't appear to be a good match on players and the Astros apparently have a problem dealing with a team in their division. The Cardinals have pushed ahead, even though Kyle Lohse had had an encouraging rehabilitation start for triple-A Memphis.

The Indians' Jake Westbrook is likely one of the Cardinals targets. Indians starter Fausto Carmona is also being mentioned as a trade possibility, although he still has a year and three club options left on his contract, which means the Indians would have to get a lot in return.

Crew general manager Mark McCullers is so disappointed with the fans' failure to attend the team's two U.S. Open Cup home games that he is considering taking future games to other locations in Ohio.

The Crew charged full price for tickets for the team's first Open Cup game and drew 1,847; it discounted tickets for the second game and drew 1,760. McCullers didn't expect fringe fans to attend games that aren't part of the Major League Soccer schedule, but he thought the core fans would support it better.

South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier had an interesting take at the Southeastern Conference media days on the increasing number of arrests of college football players. He said today's players aren't worse than the players in his day, they just aren't allowed to get away with as much.

"(The arrests are) more common now because players are getting arrested for everything that in the old days they did not get arrested for," he said. "I can sort of remember back in our day, if you were out and something happened, they would say, 'Can you get home? We'll drive you home.' They did not go into the tank that night. But nowadays, as we all know, you go straight to jail if you've broken the law. There's no room for error. Times are a little different than they were 25, 30 years ago."

A proposal by Major League Baseball to move opening day to Friday, April 1, 2011, was greeted less than enthusiastically by officials at Cincinnati's Findlay Market, which has handled the annual Opening Day parade since 1920.

The market is closed on Mondays, the traditional opening day, which enables all of the market's employees to work the event. High-schoolers change into their band uniforms at the closed market and market vendors lose no money.

Friday is traditionally one of the market's busiest days.

The Puck Daddy blog on Yahoo.com listed "10 huge NHL disappointments ready for comeback seasons" - Brassard made that list - but took a shot at Blue Jackets goaltender Steve Mason right up front.

Greg Wyshynski wrote: "Is it wrong that we don't have the utmost faith in (Mason) as a comeback player?

"When you think 'bounce-back players,' he'd be high on the list: A 22-year-old goalie who won the Calder with a 2.29 GAA and 10 shutouts, and whose sophomore slump is the stuff of hockey infamy. You want to believe the kid can rebound, that he won't be another name in the long, painful history of young NHL goalies that never delivered on their promise.

"Other players who struggled mightily last season have a better shot at redemption."

Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe said at the league's media gathering that the absence of a conference title game might cause the league to move "two or three" other headline games to the last weekend of the season to fill the void. But he said moving the Oklahoma-Texas game wasn't an option.

"The major consideration is to keep the traditions of the conference as well as we can, and the traditions of that game are around the State Fair of Texas," Beebe said. "Unless they want to do something differently, I don't think that's something we'd mess with."

Bob Hunter is a sports columnist for The Dispatch.

bhunter@dispatch.com