Macon Quietly Has Become Wise Old Owl : East Regional: Freshman fanfare long behind him, Chaney’s clone has led Temple back into round of 16.

Three years ago this week, as he headed north from Philadelphia toward the Meadowlands with his Temple teammates, Mark Macon was the most celebrated freshman in college basketball.

Among 11 finalists for the Wooden Award, a second-team Associated Press All-American and freshman of the year in a vote by the U.S. Basketball Writers Assn., he was third in AP voting for player of the year.

The leading scorer on the nation’s No. 1 team, he already had been dubbed “the next Oscar Robertson” by hyperbolic broadcaster Dick Vitale, who was soon found to be premature in his assessment.

Macon made only six of 29 shots in Temple’s 63-53 loss to Duke in the East Regional final at the Meadowlands, a performance that precipitated an almost inevitable fall from grace for the 6-foot-5 guard.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, which asked in a headline during Macon’s freshman season, “The Most Remarkable Owl Ever?” last season printed a story under the headline, “Whatever Happened to Mark Macon?”

He could be found Thursday at the Meadowlands, where tonight the senior from Saginaw, Mich., will lead the 10th-seeded Owls (23-9) against third-seeded Oklahoma State (24-7) in the semifinals of the NCAA tournament’s East Regional. In the other half of the bracket, top-seeded North Carolina (27-5) will play 12th-seeded Eastern Michigan (26-6).

The winners will meet Sunday for the regional championship.

Macon is Temple’s all-time leading scorer with 2,552 points, a figure that ranks him 28th in NCAA history. He also ranks first at Temple with 276 steals and second with 4,460 minutes played, an average of 37.4 a game. He is fifth on the school’s all-time list in assists, close to the top five in rebounds and carries career averages of 20.6 points and 5.6 rebounds.

In the adoring eyes of Temple Coach John Chaney, who enjoys an extremely close relationship with the former high school All-American, Macon never has been anything but a superb player for the Owls.

Others disagree.

One reporter called his shooting “as unreliable as a five-day forecast,” more of a knock in the East than it would be in Los Angeles.

But those who malign Macon because his shooting percentage has not approached the level it reached in his freshman season--dropping from 45.4% to 40.7% in his sophomore season and to 38.9% last season before rising again this season to 43.3%--simply do not fully understand the game, Chaney said.

“He’s a young man who came in as a freshman and received all kinds of raves and raised the (expectation) level of just about everybody in the country,” Chaney said, “but he also came into a situation where we had four other kids who had been here for three years.

“They needed only a guy to cross the t ‘s and dot the i ‘s. And Mark Macon came in that first year and was just an amazing freshman. Then, all of a sudden, he was void of these other players.

“He didn’t have the supporting cast (the next two seasons). Every team used a defense with an arrow pointed toward Mark.”

Facing a variety of gimmick defenses designed specifically to stop him, and forced to move to point guard for a season, Macon still was the player of the year in the Atlantic 10 Conference as a sophomore. And last season, after returning to off-guard, he led Temple back into the NCAA tournament.

This season, supported by a still-blossoming, all-junior front line, Macon has brought the Owls into the round of 16 again, averaging 21.6 points and 4.9 rebounds a game while making 41.6% of his three-point shots.

He remains one of the nation’s premier defensive guards.

Still, when talk among college basketball followers turns to the game’s best players, Macon’s name is not always mentioned.

It should be, Chaney said.

“I don’t think anybody could have done what he’s done for our program after being assaulted and berated like he was,” Chaney said. “You don’t have a clue as to what’s been happening in this area.

“But Mark Macon, in a quiet way, has stayed his course.”

A heavily recruited high school player, Macon was led to Temple, inadvertently, by USC Coach George Raveling, who sent Macon’s high school coach, Norwaine Reed, a videotape of Chaney lecturing.

Macon was smitten.

Though recruited by virtually every major college program, Macon made no other trips after visiting Temple. He told Chaney early on: “I want to be your clone.”

Chaney said the comment brought tears to his eyes.

The most highly regarded recruit ever signed by Chaney, Macon has forged a deep friendship with his coach. In conversation, Macon often repeats Chaney’s homilies and slogans. The two have grown so close that Macon once feared his teammates might accuse Chaney of favoritism. He met with the coach and asked him to yell at him more often.

“I wanted to clone him in a way where I took what he taught me and (incorporated) it into my life as much as I could, so that when you saw me, you saw him,” Macon said of Chaney. “If I said something, you’d say, ‘That sounds just like John Chaney.’

“That’s been my greatest (pleasure)--him becoming a part of me and me becoming a part of him.”

For four seasons, more than any other player, Macon has epitomized Chaney’s no-nonsense approach to basketball.

“Mark does not make noise in playing this game,” Chaney said. “What I mean by that is, (his style) is not filled with a lot of fanfare and flair and charismatic tricks, so to speak. It’s nuts and bolts.

“He’s simply got great court presence. He doesn’t say anything to officials. You’ll never catch him retaliating. He doesn’t go around raising his finger in the air. He doesn’t slap hands. He’s not making all kinds of gyrations. The kid just plays basketball. “

And, in Chaney’s eyes, he plays it better than most.