Melvin's story: To be continued

Cleveland Melvin tells no great tales — yet.

No tales of surviving the life in East Baltimore, the neighborhood near urban ground zero for such happy TV fare as "Homicide: Life on the Street," "The Wire" and "The Corner."

No stories about the glory of DePaul basketball past — long past.

No self-aggrandizement acknowledging being last season's Big East Rookie of the Year, an accolade achieved innumerable xBox reloads ago by NBA stars Carmelo Anthony, Allen Iverson and Patrick Ewing.

Instead, for Melvin and his Blue Demons teammates, the now is all that matters. And nothing in that now will matter more Sunday afternoon then when they open conference play against Syracuse at Allstate Arena.

The Orange (14-0, 1-0 Big East) are merely the No. 1 ranked team in the nation.

DePaul, at 9-3 is off to its best start since 1999-2000.

The Orange put on a defensive show against visiting Seton Hall Wednesday night. They blocked 14 shots — a school-record 10 by Fab Melo, a sophomore Dwight Howard could-be from Brazil — and stole the ball 17 times while forcing 23 turnovers.

Syracuse coasted to a 75-49 win over a Pirates team that arrived 11-1 and won by 32 in the Carrier Dome last January.

"We are not going to be favored against Syracuse," deadpanned Oliver Purnell, DePaul's coach. "But we are going to be a team that plays hard and at least positions itself to win a lot of games."

Melvin is both buying in and selling. At a listed 6-8 and 205 pounds with boingo-like spring, he is a notably instinctive talent who remains very much a work-in-progress.

With the ball from 12 feet in, he has a will to score from unorthodox angles.

Beyond 12 feet, he is — well, he is a work in progress. And that work checklist includes: jump shot, footwork and strength.

Still, given the twilight zone that has been DePaul basketball for large chunks of the new millennium, Melvin and fellow sophomores Brandon Young and Morgan Moses have emerged as the newest blue notes most likely to wake up the echoes of Meyer, Corzine, Aguirre, et al.

"I know it's been a great program with great teams," Melvin said. "But our focus is forward, on us winning and listening to Coach 'O.P.' and taking care of business. It's a great fit for me."

Melvin has made an art of quietly fitting in since he was a lad in East Baltimore. Some would suggest it has been a survival skill.

"Cleve showed up at the [Cecil-Kirk] Center as one of the shyest 12-year-olds I'd ever seen," said Anthony "Dudie" Lewis, later Melvin's AAU coach. "But he was tall and lanky and I'd coached his father [Cleveland Sr.]. He was also respectful and wanted to play the game. So we got started."

By his final year at Lake Clifton High School, Melvin averaged 17 points and 11 rebounds as the Lakers finished 29-0 with city and state titles.

Then, it was a year at Notre Dame Prep in Fitchburg, Mass.

"I had to get my SATs up," Melvin said.

While at Notre Dame, he took a Halloween weekend visit to DePaul in 2009 but followed by verbally committing to Connecticut. When coach Jim Calhoun insisted he would be developed as a power forward at UConn, he decommitted.

"If I am to play at a higher level, I think it will be as a wing," Melvin said.

DePaul assistant Billy Garrett — Purnell's lone holdover from the Jerry Wainwright era — kept in touch with Melvin.

"Give much credit to Billy for the recruiting," Purnell said. "He told me there was this guy still out there he had seen and we both went in and I talked to Cleve and the fit seemed great."

The parts matched because Melvin's strengths — quickness, vertical, coachability, work ethic — fit with Purnell's relentless pursuits of pressure, smarts and speed.

"Yes, but to say that we knew what we were getting, that's probably not true," Purnell said. "We thought we had a good guy who would develop and be a pretty good player in our system."

Instead, just about the time the ominous specter of Big East play loomed, Melvin began to soar.

He soared so high that he was named conference Rookie of the Year despite missing the final four games of the season with a broken thumb. He finished averaging 17.4 ppg in Big East play (14.3 overall) and shooting 52 percent.

Among the games Melvin missed: a demeaning 107-59 loss at Syracuse on March 5.

"We didn't see him in person last year but I think he's evidence of the way Oliver and DePaul are headed," said Jim Boeheim, the Syracuse coach. "In basketball, if you've been down, it takes at least three years to get where you need to go in this league.

"You need a system and then you need one year of some good players coming in followed by another and then another. DePaul seems right in the middle of that process. It always takes time."

Time enough for Melvin to craft even more great tales — some that one day even he may tell.

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