MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Gale Catlett is spending lots of time in Morgantown with his grandchildren these days.
 
Earlier this week, I tracked down the Cat, who will be turning 84 on Halloween, to get his thoughts on record-setting forward Chris Brooks, one of eight athletes going into this year's WVU Sports Hall of Fame.
 
"Well deserved," Catlett said of Brooks' induction.
 
We talked about the huge impact Brooks' signing had on West Virginia basketball and the Atlantic 10 Conference back in the mid-1980s. The A-10 has always existed in the shadows of the Big East and Brooks was among the first McDonald's All-Americans to play in the league.
 
He was also the first to ever sign at WVU.
 
Catlett thought getting Brooks to attend West Virginia also helped him recruit other New York City area standout players such as Mike Boyd, Ricky Robinson, Lawrence Pollard, Wilfred Kirkaldy, Seldon Jefferson, Gordon Malone, Brian Lewin and Calvin Bowman.
 
Brooks came a year ahead of Temple's Mark Macon, the next big-name recruit to play in the conference. Catlett continues to hold Macon and his coach, the late John Chaney, in high regard.
 
"Mark Macon was a big name, and he did a great job. Also, there has never been a better coach in the league than John Chaney," he said. "He was as good as any coach in the country. Their style was so hard to play. You played 25 games regular and then you've got to play Temple twice.
 
"The score at halftime is 24-22, and you are used to having it 44-42, and Macon fit right into that system," Catlett said.
 
During his 30 years coaching Cincinnati and West Virginia from 1972 until 2002, Catlett was always regarded among the game's top strategists.
 

But one of the teams that usually gave the Cat fits was Temple, specifically how Chaney utilized Macon, a 6-foot-4, 185-pound guard who could shoot over smaller players and drive past bigger defenders. Catlett told me earlier this week that the difficulty other teams had defending Macon whenever he studied videotape led him to design a defense specifically for Macon.
 
It was one of the rare instances that he could recall when he was forced to come up with something just to stop one player.
 
"We didn't play a box-and-one, it was more of a matchup," Catlett recalled. "We had 35, which was our zone matchup, that we used all the time and had great success with.
 
"Well, when we played Temple, we couldn't play 35 because (Macon) runs free and John knows where to get him the ball, and he could shoot it or penetrate it," he said. 
 
So, Catlett's old 35 matchup zone defense turned into 35X whenever the Mountaineers played Temple. 
 
"That means we'd put four guys in a matchup and then another guy was on Macon, and we told him, 'Never let Macon catch the ball,'" Catlett explained. "Macon had some of his toughest games against us because of that special defense. That's how much we respected him."
 
A quick check of the box scores from the years West Virginia played Temple partially bears this out.

Macon was 3 of 13 from the floor for 8 points in Temple's 62-21 win at the Coliseum the first time the Mountaineers faced him on Feb. 23, 1988. A week later, he was 11 of 20 shooting for 27 points in a 78-69 win in Philadelphia.
 
In 1989, Macon was 12 of 26 from the floor for 28 points in a 65-63 WVU win in Morgantown, but the guard had a tougher time in Philadelphia a month later when he was just 6-of-13 for 13 points in an 18-point win over the Mountaineers.
 
His junior year in 1990 against West Virginia included an 11-for-25 shooting performance and 27 points in a 73-69 Temple win in Philadelphia, and a 5-for-20, 20-point effort in WVU's 55-51 win at the Coliseum in the final game of the regular season.
 
Macon played West Virginia twice in 1991, winning both times in Philadelphia. He was 9-of-18 from the floor for 24 points in McGonigle Hall and was 6-of-13 from 14 points in a three-point Temple win in the Palestra in the Atlantic 10 Tournament quarterfinals.
 
But he missed the game in Morgantown with a sprained ankle, a 91-66 West Virginia victory that saw Chaney get ejected before the end of the first half. Afterward, Chaney told reporters that "Jesus wouldn't have made a difference" against the fired-up Mountaineers that afternoon.
 
Macon certainly wasn't in that category, but he was a terrific college basketball player who ranks among the best to ever play in the WVU Coliseum.