The sweet-spot combination of confidence and skill in Division I basketball is tricky to find and trickier to maintain. A player can be brimming with one, but betrayed by the other. One day can be draped in a sense of sky-high invincibility. The next feels like an unraveling golf swing depositing balls into creeks.
Navigating the in between, the space where San Diego State guard Darrion Trammell has lived much of this season, can test and torture.
Trammell somehow, some way has done something even more impressive than locating the intersection that players claw and strain to reach. He's done it at the absolute best time, scoring 21 points against No. 1 Alabama and rising up in the biggest moment against Creighton by hitting the winning free throw to send the Aztecs to the program's first Final Four.
One moment, the talent who couldn't produce.
Another moment, the star the team couldn't live without.
"It was a lot," Trammell said of the criticism he heard. "It was skill. I couldn't shoot. I was too short. I didn't have a motor or they didn't see my potential, things like that."
The offensive transition from Seattle University to San Diego State was expected to be smoother for Trammell, who averaged 18.7 points in two seasons with the Redhawks. As an Aztec, he's averaged single-digit scoring, and his shooting percentages from the field (36.1), 3-point range (31.6) and free-throw line (73.5) have all drooped.
In a nine-game stretch that ended with the opening game of the Mountain West Conference Tournament, Trammell shot 21.4 percent from the field and 15.8 from 3 in games where he scored less than 10 points.
He was shut out twice, recorded three in another, four in two others and five in another.
Offensive struggles fueled the whisper. Was he too small, at 5-10, to deal with bigger guards at this level? Was the step up too much? Was relinquishing the score-first mentality to fit in a more solid team concept devoid of clear-cut stars unsettling?
Then, Alabama. Then, Creighton. Then, the Final Four.
"The things that really matter are inside our circle," said Trammell, who was named MVP of the South Regional. "The people around me were giving me the support I needed through it all. I never stopped believing. I never stopped working.
"You can't really let things like that get to you."
Though, how could it not? A prideful player who had proven his offensive chops, thrust into what could be a deep pool of doubt. It's one thing to say the confidence remained unbruised.
It's another to make others buy that.
"What he did, he did on his own," Aztecs coach Brian Dutcher said. "I never criticize a shot a guy takes, but after a while, you miss a few, your confidence dips a little. He just fought his way out of his own slump. He said, I'm going to shoot it and I'm going to live with the results. And he shot it and we all lived with the results. And he shot it magnificently (at the regional).
"Confidence is something no one can give you. It has to come from within."
Backcourt mate Lamont Butler delivered reminders of what was within Trammell along the way.
"I always told him, you're here for a reason. You're really good," Butler said. "I know first-hand how good he is. I was battling against him every day. I told him to just keep battling through it."
A late-season hiccup in the Mountain West tournament final against Utah State, when he scored four points, was followed by a five-point NCAA opener versus College of Charleston. He hit just three of 14 shots and one of nine 3s.
The cratering could have continued.
Instead, Trammell rolled out a 13-point game against Furman to reach the Sweet 16. After that, he produced a sensational offensive game against perhaps the most formidable team in the tournament.
Trammell dissected Alabama, going 3-for-5 from 3. The real damage came with mid-range shots that staunched momentum as a pro-Crimson Tide crowd waited to erupt.
They didn't. Trammell did.
"He stepped up and made really important, timely shots," Dutcher said. "This is something he did because there's something internally in him that he was able to raise to that next level."
Just in time.
"It's all about them telling me I deserve this," Trammell said of those inside the "circle" who kept him anchored. "That's what I've been thinking about throughout the entire tournament."
There was another thought.
"Leave no regrets," he said.
Trammell decided to stop overthinking and over-analyzing. Even if he needed much of the season to sort how he fit into the Aztecs' bigger puzzle, it was worth it to find himself 40 minutes from the national championship game.
Time helps. Winning helps more.
"We're really locked in on what we have in front of us right now," Trammell said. "We really have a shot to really win this thing."
A shot, with a newly confident shooter.
