Melo Trimble arrived at the Rutgers Athletic Center Tuesday night as living, breathing, running and gunning proof that one special player — and one special recruiting class — can change the course of a college basketball program.
That has always been one thing I’ve loved about covering basketball. A class of one or two or three special players — each with his own unique story — can turn the fortunes of a basketball outfit pretty quickly.
A year after going 17-15 overall and 9-9 in the ACC, the No. 10 Terps are now 25-5 and 13-4 in their first year in the Big Ten following their 60-50 victory over Rutgers on the Scarlet Knights’ Senior Night.
Senior guard Dez Wells went for 20 points and 10 rebounds –and this dunk over two defenders that was No. 1 on the SportsCenter Top 10 — and Trimble had 10 points and 2 assists in the victory.
If the NCAA Tournament began today, the Terps would be be a dangerous 3 seed in the East, according to ESPN’s Joe Lunardi.
Rutgers?
Well, the Scarlet Knights — also in their first year in Big Ten — lost their 13th straight game to fall to 10-20 and 2-15 in the Big Ten. The last time they went to the NCAA Tournament was 1991, when George H.W. Bush was the President.
The 6-3 Trimble, who was born four years later and ulimately starred at Arlington (VA) Bishop O’Connell, was heavily courted by Rutgers when Mike Rice was the head coach and David Cox, a Landover, Md. native, was the associate head coach. Trimble took several unofricials to Rutgers during his recruitment.
“Mike recruited [Trimble] pretty good,” Damon Handon, Director of the DC Premier Basketball Club, told SNY.tv by phone earlier Tuesday. “I think at one time, Rutgers was probably leading, to be perfectly honest with you, because of Melo’s relationship with Dave Cox. They did a good job recruiting Melo. I can remember one event in Milwaukee, I think it was going into Melo’s junior year, Mike actually brought his whole family to watch him play. He had his kids with him to watch Melo play.
“I believe Rutgers was the first high-major school to offer him….Rutgers was definitely one of the schools that was in there [for Trimble].”
Of course, we all know how that one turned out.
Trimble chose Maryland over Rutgers, Georgetown and Cincinnati, among others, and entered the Rutgers game averaging 16.2 points, 3.7 rebounds and 3.1 assists.
He is in contention for Big Ten Freshman of the Year Honors (along with Ohio State’s D’Angelo Russell) and a finalist for the Wayman Tisdale Award, presented annually to the national freshman of the year.
You know who else is a finalist for that award?
A few guys you may have heard of named Jahlil Okafor, Karl-Anthony Towns and Russell — all projected top-five picks in the upcoming NBA Draft.
More than a dozen NBA scouts were on hand at Rutgers to watch Wells throw down some nasty dunks and to watch Trimble run the offense. He is projected as a second-round pick in 2016, and if Maryland coach Mark Turgeon and the program’s fans are lucky he will stick around with his fellow classmates at least another year.
Trimble was part of a four-man recruiting class that also included Jared Nickens, Dion Wiley and Michal Cekovsky and was ranked No. 12 by Rivals.com in the recruiting rankings for the Class of 2014.
Rutgers’ freshmen class of Mike Williams, D.J. Foreman, Bishop Daniels, Ibrahima Diallo, Ryan Johnson and Shaq Doorson was not ranked.
Nickens is averaging 6.2 points and is out of the Sports U AAU program that also produced Kentucky freshman Towns and Vanderbilt freshman Wade Baldwin IV, who was also courted by Rutgers before they backed off, a source said. Entering the game, Nickens had made 49 3-pointers on the season while Trimble had 48. Both are in the mix for the school record in that category.
Along with Wiley and Cekovsky, they have also contributed to what is a huge year for the Terps and Turgeon, who lost five transfers last year and topped Jeff Goodman’s list of coaches on the hot seat last May but now must be considered a candidate for Big Ten Coach of the Year.
“Any time you can recruit a kid like Melo Trimble, it’s going to make any coach look good,” Handon said. “I don’t know if he was considered a 5-star recruit coming out of high school, but we feel he’s as good as any point guard in this class.”
“Melo and Wiley, they were the best two players in the Washington, D.C., area last year so that was important for Maryland, to get them to stay home,” Handon added. “When you get the best two players in the area to stay home, that’s good for the program.”
It also helped Maryland that the freshmen bonded early.
As I wrote last summer at the Mary Kline Classic, Nickens, Trimble and Wiley all got the same tattoo to show their common bond.
“People think that we’re going to be a young team and we don’t have any guard play,” Trimble told me then. “We’re just going to go in there and work hard and show everybody why we’re going to be a national championship team.”
From Handon’s perspective, that bonding time was critical for Maryland’s young players.
“I know that Melo and Jared and Dion, they really bonded last summer,” Handon said. “They spent a lot of time together and they bonded. They all have a good rapport.”
Handon believes after committing to the Terps in Demember of his junior year, Trimble wanted to prove that he could play at the highest level.
“I think he’s gotten better since committing to Maryland,” Handon said. “I think he wants to prove to people that he can play at that level. You’re talking about a kid that not only was the best player on our teams, he was also the most coachable player. He had the best work ethic.”
Rutgers coach Eddie Jordan knows all about Trimble, having coaching him for one game with the DC Assault while Jordan was between jobs.
“He’s a heck of a talent, and wonderful kid, and again, it’s not easy to do what he’s doing,” Jordan told the Washington Post in January.
As for Jordan, he remains in the same position as virtually every Rutgers coach across the last 30 years.
He needs one strong recruiting class — one class similar to this Maryland freshman class — to get things going.
To varying degrees, Fred Hill and Rice both got some talented New Jersey players to commit to Rutgers, but they either ended up leaving (see: Mike Rosario, Greg Echenique, Eli Carter) or stayed but did not enjoy team success (see current seniors: Myles Mack and Kadeem Jack.)
“I really though Mike was onto something when the got there,” Brian Coleman, who coached Nickens, Towns and Baldwin with Sports U, told SNY.tv. “Mike was getting some players and doing some stuff, getting players like Myles and Eli and Kadeem. He was getting some guys…That’s all it takes, just one class that can really help turn the program around.”
Can Rutgers do it in the near future?
“I hope they can,” Coleman said. “I don’t know where Eddie and his staff are with recruiting, if they have relationships with people and with some good programs that they can recruit from. Hey, look, Seton Hall got some guys in there and they started off playing very well….So I think Eddie and those guys can get it done, it’s just going to take some time.”
How much time remains to be seen.
But as Trimble and the Maryland frosh have proven, it only takes one strong class blended with some upperclassmen to turn the tide.
Rutgers is still waiting for that day to come.
Photo: USA Today Sports
