Oh, that crossover? The one that catapulted guard Melo Trimble to stardom?
“Yeah, I don’t want to make a big deal out of it,” Terrapins men’s basketball coach Mark Turgeon said Thursday. “Melo’s just a good player. It happened to work for him.”
America seemed to think otherwise.
By now, you’ve seen what Trimble did to Michigan State guard Tum Tum Nairn on Jan. 17, 2015 to cap a 21-point first-half explosion on national television.
The cut to the right. The stop on a dime. Nairn falling to the hardwood, leaving Trimble ample room to rise up from the top of the key. Swish.
“It was real loud [in Xfinity Center],” forward Damonte Dodd said. “I didn’t see him fall, but I guess everyone else saw him fall.”
Eighteen games through the 2014-2015 campaign, people were starting to know Trimble: a lightening quick guard from this state with a penchant for getting to the rim. But after The Crossover?
“It went off from there,” Dodd said. “Just took off like an airplane.”
He became Melo Trimble, the nationally renowned Terp with the winning smile and all the talent in the world. He became Melo Trimble, the leader of a basketball renaissance in College Park.
On Saturday in East Lansing, Michigan, 371 days since The Crossover, Trimble will get his first crack at Michigan State since the Spartans knocked the Terps out of the Big Ten semifinals with a 62-58 win on March 14. Now he’s the point guard for the No. 7 Terps and a candidate for National Player of the Year honors.
With Washington Wizards point guard John Wall sitting courtside Tuesday, Trimble led the Terps over Northwestern, with a game-high 18 points, avoiding what would’ve been a tough loss to swallow; the Terps upended the Wildcats by 13 points on the road earlier this season.
“I looked at [Wall],” Trimble said, “he looked at me.”
As star point guards in the DMV area, Wall and Trimble are similar. Wall, a two-time NBA All-Star, is someone for Trimble to aspire to.
That such a comparison could even be made at this point in Trimble’s career is a huge testament to the sophomore. After testing the professional waters following last season, the Upper Marlboro native is averaging 13.9 points and 5.7 assists.
But attaching Trimble’s worth exclusively to his numbers doesn’t do him justice. In 2015-16, the guard has saved his best moments for the brightest lights, inspiring awe from teammates, opponents and fans. Just like The Crossover did.
There was Dec. 1 when Trimble went head-to-head with North Carolina guard Marcus Paige, interspersing long 3-pointers with jaw-dropping passes in one of the best college basketball games of the season.
There was Jan. 9, when Trimble drilled the game-winning 3-pointer with seconds left to mute the Wisconsin fans at Kohl Center.
But there have also been games like Tuesday, when Trimble, like the Terps, was hardly at his best. He finished 8-for-18, and 1 of 6 from long range.
Yet with the game tied at 48 with under a minute to go, there was Trimble, stealing the ball from forward Joey van Zegeren, giving the Terps the final shot. His 3-pointer from the top of the key grazed the rim, but he proved integral in the overtime period.
With Wall looking on, Trimble kicked off scoring with an and-1 before dishing out two of his game-high six assists. The Terps pulled out the 62-56 win.
Crisis averted.
The next day, Michigan State dropped its third game in a row, continuing their confusing tumble from the top-ranked team in the country. Nairn, the victim of The Crossover, didn’t play for the second straight game with plantar fasciitis. He’d been averaging 4.5 assists to .9 turnovers.
When the Big Ten foes take the court Saturday, Nairn will be watching from the sideline, unable to make a dent in what’s becoming a spirited rivalry.
For now, he’ll just be remembered as the kid who Trimble sent helplessly to the hardwood, the fodder for a shooting star’s surge to the top of college basketball.
