Temple of Gloom

John Chaney’s eyes seem sunken and hollow. The bags under them are dark.

Is it just us, or after all these years at Temple does he actually look like a wise old wide-eyed owl?

He is back in the final eight for a fifth time, one step shy of his first Final Four at 69.

This time there is no Duke to stop him, as happened twice before.

Merely a defending national champion, Michigan State, stands in the way of his 11th-seeded Owls today in the South Regional final at the Georgia Dome.

This could be Chaney’s last chance.

That’s what everyone said two years ago before the loss to Duke, but here he is again, so familiar--the rasping voice, the grudging love, the demanding 5:30 a.m. practices.

“Coach is a great man,” guard Quincy Wadley said. “He’ll bring us in to practice, and we won’t even touch a ball. He’ll just talk to us about what we should be doing in the classroom, things like that.”

Point guard Lynn Greer nodded.

“You better believe he’s a talker,” Greer said. “He’ll bring us in sometimes, keep us in there four hours, talk for three.”

He is demanding, even of their words.

“First I’d like to say, he’s always going to find something wrong,” Wadley said.

One player said something about Temple’s will overcoming Michigan State’s.

Chaney pounced.

“They’re champions. What do you mean, ‘will.’ They’re going to rip you up.”

Kevin Lyde, the beefy center who must contend with the waves of Spartan big men, said Temple can win if it rebounds well.

“If you rebound well,” Chaney said. “Look at these guys. When have they ever rebounded well?”

Nor was Greer spared.

“They’re going to intimidate your [butt], Lynn. Push your little butt around,” Chaney said.

Yet when they leave, they’ll miss him, and they’ll call often.

Eddie Jones reached Chaney at the hotel Saturday. So did Aaron McKie. “If they could, they’d will us to get to the Final Four,” Chaney said. “They always get on the phone, ‘Do this, do that.’

“They’re playing in the pros. I say, ‘Get off the phone, go talk to your own coach.’ The only one who never says anything is Aaron McKie. All the others have a secret.”

Chaney has secrets too. Though he welcomes coaches at his practices, he never conducts clinics on his famous matchup zone.

Maybe it’s something left over from his stepfather, a carpenter who would let apprentices watch him work, but never teach them the skills, lest they take his job.

Chaney preaches--and preaches is definitely the word--discipline and defense and limiting turnovers.

The famous matchup zone gets all the notice.

But it’s the absolute prohibition against turnovers that makes Temple unique.

“I believe a blind man can win if he doesn’t have turnovers,” Chaney said. “If you have 80 possessions and 80 shots, you’re going to win. But if I have 80 possessions and 60 shots at the basket, I can say I lost because of turnovers.”

Temple has had no more than 13 turnovers in any game this season, and as few as four, three times. One game, they had zero at halftime.

“They came in the dressing room screaming, ‘We didn’t have any turnovers,’ ” Chaney said.

He wins with “kids who come from the asphalt.”

Partly, he chooses them. Mostly they choose him.

Maybe 85% are from what Chaney called “one-parent families--or less.” He says he recruits players from well-to-do, stable families too. Most of them go somewhere else.

It is easy to choose something other than the hard way when you have a choice.

“They say, ‘We’re going to play and have fun,’ ” Chaney said. “I say, ‘You damn well are not going to have fun playing for me.’ ”

Those dawn practices are not only because the gym is available.

“Self-discipline is one of the highest forms of intelligence,” Chaney said. “So a kid can learn to say, ‘I’m not going to do that,’ or ‘I’m not going to go there.’ ”

He is a man who embraces the meek, but mixes with the mighty.

Bill Cosby is one of his closest friends. Chaney says Cosby owes him money.

“I tried to search him, but he doesn’t have a pocket in his pants,” he said.

“He took me out to dinner to a French restaurant. We got string beans with no ham hocks in them. Chicken with little lines on it like it’s just been turned over.

“I reached for the salt and pepper and the waiter slapped my hand. I said, ‘I’m getting out of here and going to get myself a hoagie or a cheese steak. I’m not a high-class person. I’ve got to get down to 9th Street.’ ”

People remember him because he remembers them.

Consider the dear friend dying of cancer. Chaney comforted him with the lightest, deftest touch.

“ ‘Teddy, I want you to pray for us,’ ” he told his friend. “Just to tease him and let him know we were praying for him.”

Soon enough, everyone moves on.

“I won’t miss getting up at five o’clock, that’s for sure,” Wadley said.

“I won’t mind getting a few more hours of sleep, especially with him calling me at 12 or 1 in the morning sometimes, just to see what I’m up to,” Greer said.

That pleases Chaney.

“I think an old prophet saying came out of the Bible: ‘I’m not through with you yet,’ ” he said. “Working with youngsters, the demands I make are tremendous.

“There’ll come a time when the work is done, and I’ll tell them how happy I am with them. Am I pleased with them? Of course. But I don’t want you to let them know.”

On the doorstep of the Final Four, maybe--just maybe--they’re not through with him yet either.