COLUMBUS, Ohio — Melo Trimble played through bumps and bruises throughout his freshman season, but he never suffered an injury so serious that he was held out of the rest of the game — until Sunday.
Trimble sustained what the team would only classify as a head injury with 8:25 remaining in Maryland’s 69-59 loss to West Virginia on Sunday and was not cleared by the team’s medical staff to return to the game.
The injury ended a remarkable first season for Trimble, who averaged 16.2 points, 3.8 rebounds and three assists per game for the Terrapins.
“We have one point guard in a program, and a really good one in Melo,” Maryland coach Mark Turgeon said. “It’s the first time all year that he couldn’t play. He took a beating tonight.”
Trimble took three hard falls, but it was the last that forced him from the game. He drove to the basket with just under four minutes remaining in the first half when he was hit in the air and couldn’t land properly. Then, with 15 minutes left to play, he collided with West Virginia forward Nathan Adrian on a hard pick, running directly into Adrian’s left side and smacking his head off the floor once he fell to the court.
The point guard returned to the game after just one possession, but he only lasted six more minutes before leaving for good. Trimble was trying to intercept a long, cross-court pass off a long rebound when he again lost control and landed funny, and Maryland forward Damonte Dodd, trailing the play, appeared to knee Trimble in the side of the head.
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Escorted back to the far end of the bench, Trimble answered questions from members of the team’s athletic staff, frequently putting his head in his hands and pulling the bottom of his jersey up over his face.
“He’s battled through so much all year long — just everything that he went through,” forward Jon Graham said. “He continued to get up and fight. Every time he got hit, he got right back up. Hard hits. He continued to get back up. That’s a tough kid.”
Trimble had 15 points and seven points, which remained a team high, when he left the game after 27 minutes, but the Terrapins’ biggest struggles were in protecting the ball.
While Trimble was adept at dribbling through and breaking West Virginia’s vaunted full-court press, Maryland struggled without him, eventually finishing with a season-high 23 turnovers — seven after he left the game.
“I think it had an effect on us, just because we’re used to having him being there,” guard Richaud Pack said. “I can’t think of any situation where we’ve had to play without him as our point guard late in the game. I think it maybe affected us not having him there.”
Trimble was not in the locker room when it opened to reporters a half-hour after the game ended, and Turgeon didn’t offer an update on his status except that he didn’t “pass enough of the tests to come back in.”
“Would the outcome have been different? We don’t know,” Turgeon said. “But obviously, we weren’t the same without him out there. We were just trying to figure it out.”
• Zac Boyer can be reached at zboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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