Elijah Macon reached double figures in points once as a freshman in 2015 and three times last season. He wanted to and was primed to make a leap this season … but Macon looked like a spare part for a while. He was a starter and then he wasn’t. He was injured and didn’t make the trip to Oklahoma State to start Big 12 play. His coach wondered if he’d ever had a player who was injured as often, and then Macon went 0-0-6-0 in his first four conference games.

In the past 11 games, though, he’s been something else. He’s been someone else.

Understand West Virginia cares less about an individual’s efforts at that position and more about what Macon, Brandon Watkins and Sagaba Konate come together to contribute. But understand, too, that Watkins has been very quiet lately and Konate is, because of his inexperience, limited. The Mountaineers do still need an individual at that spot, and Macon has become just that.

In his fifth Big 12 game and the team’s sixth, Macon had 13 points, his first double-figure game of the season. He’s gone 8-8-17-10 in the past four, and back-to-back double-figure games had happened just once before.

In the last 11 games, he has as many double-figure scoring games as he had last season. He’s averaging 7.2 points per game. He’s shooting — and this is important — 31-for-45. He’s been fairly consistent, which is a plus, and I’ll vouch for the two exceptions. The officiating in the first Kansas State game was trash. Trash. How does someone foul out in nine minutes? And there wasn’t much need, never mind time, for WVU’s bigger bodies in a game it won rather easily at Iowa State.

If you ask me, “What’s gotten into Macon?” I would tell you he’s matured. He’s a leader, and what he, Watkins and Konate are doing is selflessly commendable. He’s a factor on both ends. And he’s changed as a person.

We’ve been over this, but Macon lost his mother to cancer. They were extraordinarily close. In many ways, they still are. But that hit him hard, and he needed time to learn how to live a very, very different life.

This is from the fall:

“My first two years, I don’t believe I was always into it mentally, from family things to personal things and trying to figure Elijah out,” he said. “That’s pretty much what I worked on over the summer. A lot of self-evaluation of myself and what I need to do.”

It’s been two nearly two years since Macon’s mother, Renai, passed away after battling cancer. She was his best friend and his biggest fan, and though she’d been sick and her condition was worsening, the loss rocked Macon just as he was getting settled into his first season playing college basketball.

Last week, he began his fourth year and third season as the Mountaineers began preseason practice, and only now does Macon feel as though he’s where he needs to be.

“Now I get to do everything I can do this year,” he said. “I feel like the last couple of years, I’ve been on hold after losing my mom. I focused on basketball all summer trying to get better.”

Remember, Macon’s 23. He spent a year at prep school in New Hampshire. He redshirted and wasn’t often around the team in 2014. But life happens fast. Tragedy jolts you. Macon was stunned, and he realized he was losing time. He had to grow up. He had to hurry. He had to do it more on his own than before. That can’t be easy. But that’s the background.

There’s an anecdote Macon shares about Buddy Hield. They played against one another before they entered college. Macon was a bigger deal back then. But when Macon was watching the NBA draft, he saw Hield cross the stage early and enter a lucrative pro career. Macon was a long, long way away. That got Macon’s attention, and he went to work on his game.

He’s made the most progress and maybe has spent the most time on his free-throw shooting. He was worse than a coin flip his first two seasons. He’s suddenly as good as the Mountaineers have. He started this season 17-for-30. He’s 17-for-22 since then. WVU makes its players work on it, but Macon took some initiative of his own.

He studied Julius Erving.

Erving was his late mother Renai’s favorite player, and Macon, who prays and connects with his mother all the time, decided to believe the numbers. Erving shot 77.7 percent in his career and was above 80 percent three times, including the last of his 16 pro seasons.

“It struck me to go watch his free throws, just knowing he was one of the greatest players of all time,” Macon said. “I wanted to watch some old players instead of the new players, this new generation. I wanted to see the old guys. Back in the ’80s, they didn’t really have this and that. They shot the ball regularly. I just wanted to go back and watch his technique and how he used to shoot the ball.”

Macon’s routine is simple. Simple to practice. Simple to perform. There is no excessive dribbling, no taking the ball behind his back. It’s a few steps and a few seconds.

“I felt like I was just dribbling and thinking too much about it going in instead of just shooting the shot, the same shot that you know is going to go in,” Macon said. “Every time you go up there, you know it’s going to go in because every day you shoot them the same.”

He might be someone you trust late in a game now. Bob Huggins took him out twice late in the loss to Kansas, once for Dax Miles and once for Beetle Bolden. Miles went 0-for-2 at the line and Bolden went 1-for-2. Macon may be ready to take on that burden, too.

I think one of the biggest steps for him was mostly overlooked and, honestly, not that important when you look at the overall body of work for the Mountaineers this season. But when WVU lost at home to Oklahoma State, Macon was pretty clear with what he thought went wrong.

The Mountaineers, who won at Virginia, which plays perhaps the best pack-line defense in the country, were 10-for-13 from 2-point range and 6-for-13 from 3-point range in the first half. Working to get shots inside and moving the ball to stay out of trouble and get clean shots outside, WVU scored on 19 of 30 possessions in the first half and had 1.5 points per possession.

In the second half, the Mountaineers were 4-for-8 from 2-point range and 6-for-20 from 3-point range. They scored on 12 of 34 possessions and had 0.9 points per possession.

The 33 3-point attempts was a season high and the sixth-highest total in Huggins’ 10 seasons, and it was unusual for a game when WVU’s largest deficit after halftime was the final score.

“It just felt like our guards weren’t into it as much as usual,” forward Elijah Macon said. “Our plan was to drive to the bucket, but I feel like we forced a lot of them and hoped they’d go in or hoped we’d get a rebound. I was kind of confused by some of those plays.”

That was a mouthful, a forward pointing a finger at guards, and that sort of thing could be interpreted in any manner of ways. I don’t think it was intended to be or was taken to be critical. It seemed constructive, and one game later, when Kansas State played without its big body inside, the guards went at the rim again and again.

That tactic worked, and Macon didn’t look providential. The Mountaineers looked savvy.

The Mountaineers (20-5, 8-4 Big 12) turned a tied game at the half into a runaway near the end and would lead by as many as 22 points. They shot 50 percent for the game after shooting 37 in Wednesday’s win at Oklahoma and were 20-for-34 from the floor (59 percent) and just 2 for 5 from 3-point range in the second half.

“Obviously, we had a talk at halftime and said what we were supposed to do. Put your head down and attack the rim. Get on the boards,” forward Elijah Macon said. “They didn’t have a shot blocker. All we had to do was attack and make our free throws and constantly get stops.”

A week earlier, WVU played quite the opposite in a home loss to Oklahoma State, a team the Mountaineers beat by 17 points on the road at the start of conference play. In the second half of that game, which began with WVU ahead by four points, the offense was 4 for 8 from 2-point range and 6 for 20 from 3-point range, and Macon said afterward he was “confused” by some decisions.

He felt better Saturday.

“We need the guys who can shoot to shoot the ball,” he said. “Some guys on our team, nobody can guard them on a straight-line drive. That’s what I was trying to harp on. Just drive it, and we’ll do the best we can to clean it up. If not, we’ll try to get a stop.”

I don’t know that sophomore Macon says that. I don’t know that Macon from two months ago gets away with that. But given where he is — and how far he’s come, much of it his own doing — it resonates. He’s been here for four years. He has relationships with everyone on the roster because he’s been here as long as Nathan Adrian and Watkins and longer than the seniors who transferred in and the rest of the roster who haven’t been here as long. And now he wants to make his time matter.