MILWAUKEE -- Last year, Melvin Whitaker watched the NCAA tournament from a prison in Virginia where he was serving time for slashing an opponent's face after a disagreement in a pickup basketball game.

Tonight, he will start at center for Mount St. Mary's against Michigan State in the first round of the Midwest Regional, with his keen defensive skills essential to the Mount's slim hopes of an upset.

Ordinarily, that's a sequence of events that might raise eyebrows. A former felon helps a low-profile team rise up and reach the promised land of March Madness? Sounds like the notion of winning at all costs might have prevailed, and that standards and ethics possibly were compromised.

But no one is suggesting any of that in Whitaker's case.

Only Jim Phelan, the Mount's legendary coach, could recruit such a controversial, program- altering player, cite theology among his motivations and encounter complete and respectful silence from the rest of the basketball world.

No doubting of his motives or priorities. No suggestion of souls being sold. No way.

Only Phelan, winner of 800 games in 45 splendid seasons at the Mount, could run interference for Whitaker so powerful that Whitaker's comeback has dwindled from a potential hot topic to a virtual non-issue.

If Whitaker had gone to a high-profile program with a dubious past, he'd be under intense scrutiny and the coach's motives would be questioned daily. And no one would be surprised, given college basketball's unseemly underside.

But you'd better check that cynicism at the door in this case.

"We're a Catholic school," Phelan said last night before the Mountaineers worked out at the Bradley Center. "We're in the business of forgiving."

Not that Phelan, 69, didn't know he'd get a boost on the court from Whitaker, a 6-foot-10 center who was one of the nation's top recruits coming out of high school four years ago. Even after more than two years in prison, such a player clearly would make a difference in the smaller Northeast Conference.

"We've never had a player of his caliber," Phelan said. "We don't recruit at that level."

But this isn't about that.

If you know Phelan, you know this isn't about that.

It's not as if he'd want to use Whitaker's talent to make a name for himself and get a better job. That's laughable. He has had the same job for 45 years. He's happy where he is.

And although he certainly loves to win as much as any coach, he doesn't need any more success. With the fourth-highest win total ever, five trips to the Division II Final Four, a college division national title in 1962 and two March Madness appearances in the past four years, he has had a Hall of Fame run.

One of these years, the dolts who vote in the Basketball Hall of Fame elections will realize it and elect him.

Phelan isn't about to compromise his standards, either. The Mount's 82 percent graduation rate (according to the NCAA's most recent figures) speaks to his priorities, as does the fact that he has coached since Eisenhower's presidency without a whiff of scandal.

Plain and simple, players don't get used and discarded at the Mount.

That innate humanity is why Phelan took Whitaker in the end, after discussing the idea with virtually every campus official and group.

It was Phelan's assistant, Don Anderson, who made the initial contact with Whitaker. It was Whitaker who called Phelan and asked about coming to the Mount, not the other way around. And it was the embrace of the entire school, not just Phelan, that led Whitaker to enroll.

"I talked to people all the way up the ladder, and I found a lot of open-minded, warm-hearted people who were very positive about giving me a second chance to prove myself," Whitaker said last night.

But in the end, it was Phelan's reputation that quelled any controversy and created the soft padding for Whitaker to land on and slowly find his footing.

Maybe Whitaker didn't choose the Mount for that reason, but he surely has benefited from it.

When a star guard named Richie Parker enrolled at Long Island University several years ago after a highly publicized sexual assault case, the school was bombarded with criticism and accused of selling out, keeping Parker in the spotlight. Only now is the controversy dying down.

Whitaker has found the going much calmer. There has been national media attention, including an article in Sports Illustrated, but no denunciations.

Not coincidentally, neither Phelan nor Whitaker has indulged in revisionist accounts of the incident that caused Whitaker such trouble. They have met the ugly facts head on.

"He was wrong, dead wrong, which he admits," Phelan said.

"I made a mistake," Whitaker said.

And he paid for that mistake with a prison sentence, which was essential to Phelan's decision to take him in the end. A sentence involving only probation probably wouldn't have allowed it to happen.

"After the O. J. Simpson trial, people were worried about the idea of someone paying the price [for a crime]," Phelan said. "But Melvin did serious time. He really paid the price."

A year later, he's on the court again amid the swirl of March Madness.

It's the story of a second chance realized, a story still unfolding but looking much more promising than a year ago.

In the end, it's going to be Whitaker's story to write, good or bad.

But what a difference the right coach can make.

Pub Date: 3/12/99