Maryland Star Melo Trimble Finding the Leadership Voice to Match His Loud Game
Melo Trimble was fat, lazy, terrible on defense and a poor leader. Is that harsh? Mean, even? Don’t blame us. The words come from Maryland’s point guard himself.
On the surface, Trimble is the star who, as one of the top freshmen in college basketball last season, paced the 28-win Terrapins in scoring, assists, steals and minutes played. Only, he didn’t feel like a star (see: those unflattering words above).
Call him humble, grounded, a realist; it’s safe to say one needn’t worry about this particular 20-year-old becoming overly enamored of himself and his game. Yet Trimble is the best player on what may be the finest and deepest team in America. Moreover, less than three weeks into his sophomore season, he is a star reborn. Trimble 2.0 is a leaner, meaner, far superior version—and much tougher to criticize.
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The benefits of the work Trimble has put into attacking his weaknesses will be on display Tuesday when second-ranked Maryland visits North Carolina, the preseason No. 1, in the second night of the ACC/Big Ten Challenge.
The Terps are stacked at every position, and their point guard’s game is similarly well-rounded. Think of Russ Smith’s pure scoring ability, Shabazz Napier’s endgame cool and Tyus Jones’ unselfishness rolled into one. Those three guards—at Louisville, Connecticut and Duke, respectively—won the past three national championships. Trimble would look mighty fine carrying the same baton down the homestretch in the first weeks of spring.
“That’s what we want,” Trimble told Bleacher Report. “But first we have to live up to the hype. I have to live up to the hype, too. I have to earn it.”
Transformation of the Body and the Mind
Trimble wasted no time rolling out his advanced self this season. In the Terps’ first real test, a 75-71 victory over Georgetown, he closed the opening half with seven points during a 12-5 stretch that evened the score at 33-33. He went off for 17 in the second half, most of those points coming from the foul line after steel-willed drives toward the rim.
Of course, Trimble had long since proved his ability to score by any means necessary. He lit up Arizona State for 31 in his fourth game with the Terps. In a signature victory last season over eventual Big Ten champ Wisconsin, Trimble put his mid-range game on display, scoring all seven of his baskets from two-point range. He helped beat Michigan State twice in different ways—blitzing the Spartans for six three-pointers in College Park and closing the win in East Lansing from the foul line, where he was 12-of-14.
“He came in and tore up the league last year,” Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo said. “I think he’s improved a lot, too. He’s a better three-point shooter. He has incredible point guard skills. He gets in the lane and gets fouled. He creates opportunities for others and himself. He’s one of the premier players in the country.”
But the best aspects of Trimble’s performance against Georgetown came when he didn’t have the ball in his hands: He could be spotted early and often defending outside the three-point line—where he rarely ventured as a freshman—and chattering at teammates. The latter was absolutely all-new. Terps senior forward Jake Layman described the Trimble of last season as “mute.”
What’s different about Trimble now? Part of it is physical. The D.C.-area native arrived in College Park a “chubby guy,” in his words, at about 205 pounds, played at 195 as a freshman and is down to 185 as a sophomore. His diet has been overhauled over the past seven months too—pizza, wings and juice have given way to salads and water.
“Once I first tasted Caesar salad, I fell in love with it,” he said.
Trimble is quicker and more explosive, which helps him at both ends of the floor. Defensively, it enables him to no longer be a liability. Maryland lacked depth at the point last season, when head coach Mark Turgeon gave Trimble extra-long rope on defense because he needed him to stay on the floor. Often, Trimble was dog-tired in games.
“The one thing he’s going to have to do a lot more for us this year is defend,” Turgeon said. “And I didn’t make him defend a lot last year. He knew how to defend, we watched film, but when push came to shove, he wasn’t going to pick up a foul because we had no backup point guard. Teams started figuring us out last year, started going harder at him.”
Trimble was one of a handful of college stars who worked as counselors at Stephen Curry’s prestigious SC30 Select Camp in June, soaking in some of the greatness of the No. 1 guard in the world. But Trimble’s point guard heart has long belonged to Los Angeles Clippers All-Star Chris Paul, and he spent dozens of offseason hours studying video of his favorite player. There’s a whole lot of dog in Paul and no sign of tired.
“I’m lazy. I don’t really get low on defense,” Trimble said prior to the start of the season. “Watching Chris Paul, he’s very active on defense. He takes pride in it, like he can check anybody. I want to be able to check anybody.”
Learning to Lead
There were moments last season at Maryland when a point guard’s voice was needed to bring things to order. These moments came on critical possessions late in games and during mundane exercises on the practice court. But Trimble—every time—kept his mouth sealed, deferring to the team’s upperclassmen, particularly the fiery Dez Wells, a senior last season.
“Sometimes even Dez would kind of not be practicing to his full potential. I would look at him and want to say something, but I was too nervous, too shy, and I didn’t say anything,” Trimble said. “Not just Dez, but Evan [Smotrycz] and all the seniors. I didn’t feel it was my place. I realize that it’s my place now to say what’s on my mind, and also I would want the same thing back from my teammates.”
The funny thing is, Wells, now playing with the Oklahoma City Thunder’s D-League squad, wanted Trimble to take charge verbally whenever he felt he needed to. “Speak up for yourself!” Wells routinely urged his teammate.
Trimble never found his voice in those moments—and will need to this season for the Terps to reach their obvious national-championship potential—yet he managed to reach Wells during a monthlong stretch when the senior was sidelined by injury. There was something about Trimble’s subtle interactions with teammates that led Wells to look inward.
“I was a harsh kind of teammate. I wasn’t really the best kind of teammate,” Wells admitted. “I would bark at teammates, and you can’t really lead like that.
“When I was hurt, he was the man out there. I watched how he handled things, how he kept his poise. I really learned from that.”
Turgeon wants Trimble to be the man and for Maryland to be his team. Power forward Robert Carter and swingman Rasheed Sulaimon have been around the college game longer, but both are transfers in their first seasons on the court with the Terps. Like Trimble, Layman is soft-spoken by nature. And then there’s freshman center Diamond Stone, one of the elite recruits in the Class of 2015. Like many with one-and-done dreams, he needs to be led.
Stone had a bit of a punctuality problem in his first weeks on campus. There were late arrivals to classes and study sessions, and the big man wasn’t too quick to bring his full attention to some basketball activities. Trimble—surprising himself—gave Stone his welcome-to-Maryland moment.
“We’re not going to be sitting around waiting for you,” Trimble told him. “We don’t just need you to be on the team. We need you to be on the team.”
Message received.
“I think I’ve become more consistent,” Stone said. “Practice is challenging, but I’m getting through it. … I am working hard on and off the court.”
Even without Stone, Maryland likely would’ve been favored to win the Big Ten and expected to back up last season’s success with a deep run in March. With Stone not only present, but fully engaged—and hanging on his point guard’s every word—these Terps could become close to unbeatable.
Focusing on the Present
Trimble is Maryland’s best player, but he isn’t its top NBA prospect. That would be Stone, widely projected as a lottery pick, should he enter the 2016 draft. Layman, a 6’9” forward with tremendous athleticism and versatility, is a likely first-rounder. Trimble could be one as well, especially in a draft that isn’t expected to be rich in point guards. If there’s a pecking order at the point, it might look like this: Kentucky freshman Jamal Murray followed by Providence junior Kris Dunn followed by the 6’3” Trimble.
“Murray is going to be probably a top-five pick. Dunn is right there in the mix for the lottery. I think Trimble is really competing for that third point guard spot,” said Elan Vinokurov, whose scouting service, EV Hoops, is utilized by multiple NBA teams.
Vinokurov is impressed by Trimble’s penchant for flipping the switch when his team needs him to end a drought or close a game with his scoring. But there are slight cracks the scout sees in Trimble’s play, particularly as a facilitator. Vinokurov says a third year at Maryland would help Trimble fill those in and could land him in the 2017 lottery.
Trimble considered turning pro after his freshman year, so it might be a stretch to envision him sticking around College Park for another season after the current campaign.
Then again, going to school and playing ball at Maryland is living the dream for a guy who grew up a Terps fan. Trimble’s current life, which includes an addiction to Instagram, religiously styling his hair like Odell Beckham Jr.'s and talking every day with mom, makes him entirely happy.
“I feel like a kid still,” he said. “I want to stay young. I know it’s not going to happen, but I just feel really young and I feel good about it.”
Turgeon enjoys sharing anecdotes about the side of Trimble that comes out when fans mob him at a football game or ask to take photos with him outside the basketball facility. What Turgeon sees in those moments is a kindness, a goodness, a happiness that not all star players have and feel.
“He stays humbler than humble through the whole process,” Turgeon said, “and that’s why his teammates like him so much. He’s not full of himself.”
Trimble said he was raised to be humble and unselfish and to treat others well. But he first saw those attributes in one of his closest friends, former Duke guard Quinn Cook, who was two years ahead of Trimble in the D.C. Assault AAU program. Trimble followed Cook around like a puppy dog then. To Trimble, Cook was the cool star who was nice to him and never big-timed anyone.
Cook became one of the most well-liked players in coach Mike Krzyzewski’s program. He was the senior and third-year starter on last season’s national-title squad who wasn’t too proud to agree that the Blue Devils had younger, more talented guys who needed to carry larger shares of the load. Now he gets regular encouragement from Trimble as he grinds away as a rookie D-Leaguer in the Cleveland Cavaliers organization. As Cook sees it, Trimble’s success at Maryland hasn’t changed him one bit. The two FaceTime with each other several times a week.
“We don’t usually talk about basketball. We talk about life, college, how we’re adjusting, stuff like that,” Cook said. “He’s a great guy. He’s soft-spoken and treats people well, but I think he’s proved he’s also the best player on that [Maryland] team. I think he’s a leader. I think he’s the best guard in the country.”
Maybe he is and maybe he isn’t. But on a Terps team that has no ceiling, Melo Trimble is the man. And those are just about the last words he’d ever utter about himself.
“I don’t think I’m better than anybody else,” he said.
But we know it. After all he has done to raise his game, Trimble probably has a sneaking suspicion too.
Steve Greenberg has covered college sports for nearly 20 years, namely for the Sporting News and the Chicago Sun-Times.
