Their Own Area Code

With a small twist of the head or a barely detectable backward glance, Garrett Temple knows that Tyrus Thomas is cutting to the basket and will be available for an alley-oop pass. Or Tasmin Mitchell will understand that it’s time to make a pizza run because Glen “Big Baby” Davis is hungry.

“It’s like we have ESP or something,” Thomas said last weekend at the NCAA Atlanta Regional. “We know who wants the ball and who needs to have the ball in his hands. Even when we have to change a play and it doesn’t work, we’re still on the same page. There’s some special chemistry here.”

Temple, a freshman guard, joined the conversation.

“Most teams don’t have that kind of chemistry and that’s one of our biggest strengths,” he said. “You can’t put a value on it, either. And you can’t just get it. It’s ours.”

The core players of the Louisiana State team that will play UCLA in the NCAA tournament semifinals Saturday at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis grew up no more than 40 miles from each other. Three of the starters -- Davis, Temple and Thomas -- are from Baton Rouge, where LSU is located. A fourth, Mitchell, is from suburban Denham Springs.

“You can still walk there,” Davis says.

The fifth, the only senior starter, Darrel Mitchell, comes from St. Martinville, La., about 40 miles away.

“We tell Darrel he needs a passport to come in the locker room,” Davis says.

The charm of the Tigers is their camaraderie. Coach John Brady will happen upon the group, shouting, cussing, pummeling each other, and he’s certain that he’d better throw himself into the fray and break up a fight that has gone too far.

But then it turns out to be just Baton Rouge boys being Baton Rouge boys.

“A couple of weeks ago, we were in the locker room and I thought they were all angry at one another,” Brady said. “I thought we were about to have some kind of meltdown. For what reason? I had no idea.

“So I walked in and said, ‘Hey, knock it off.’ And they looked at me and said, ‘What do you mean?’

“I said, ‘Knock that off guys, what you all are doing, knock it off.’ And they say, ‘Coach, we’ve been doing this since we were kids. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

“I said, ‘OK.’ And they all started laughing. I walked out and I still don’t know what was going on. But they do.”

This collection of young men is absent some fathers and even some mothers and they’ve all been unofficially adopted by Collis Temple, father of Garrett and once an LSU basketball player himself. When Collis played in the early 1970s, he was the Tigers’ first African American basketball player.

“When I look back, I realize that, yes, it was a difficult thing,” Collis Temple says. “But at the time, my parents both wanted me to go to LSU. There was only one other black athlete at the school, a track runner. But I found that once you put the LSU uniform on your back, the people tend to forget anything other than that you were a Tiger.”

When the Tigers had finished beating Texas, 70-60, in overtime Saturday to earn their first Final Four trip in 20 years, a Georgia Dome official sent a floor pass up in the stands for Temple.

“He should be with these kids,” the official said.

Davis has lived at the Temple home. Thomas spends many hours a week there.

“My dad, don’t know where he is,” Davis said. “My mom, sometimes she’s in prison, sometimes not but she’s got the drug demon. I love my mom and, God willing, she will fix herself, but Mr. Temple, he’s always here for us and I thank him every day for that.”

Collis Temple coaches an AAU team that has, at various times, had his son, Davis, both Tasmin and Darrel Mitchell, Thomas and Darnell Lazare, LSU’s sixth man.

“Tyrus and my son have known each other since they were 4,” Temple said. “I met Glen when he was about 8. He was round, man, a round boy. Not very little but very round. Tasmin, he was playing on another team and beating us all the time. I finally had to sit down with Tasmin and say, ‘Look, son, you need to come play with us.’ So he did.”

The Louisiana bayou country is better known for producing football players and fanatical football fans but Collis Temple said his group was never distracted by that other sport.

“Glen played some football,” Temple said. “But really, these guys were always only into basketball. One or the other of them was always sleeping on our floor and I’d come down to tell them to go to sleep and they’d be drawing up basketball plays.”

Temple said that Davis, Tasmin Mitchell and Lazare were always going to LSU. Brady had to recruit Garrett Temple and Thomas harder.

“My son was considering Stanford,” Temple said. “He was serious about it. And Tyrus, he kept talking about wanting to leave home. He’d talk about Miami or Georgetown or Florida or such nonsense. We told him, ‘Young man, you’re staying right here. Where you gonna find more talent than you got in the gym right here? And you won’t find no gumbo!’ ”

Thomas, in fact, is something of a chef. He will speak emotionally about what goes in a good gumbo -- okra, roux, Cajun sausage, secret spices, shellfish caught the moment before the pot is ready -- and his teammates say Thomas makes the best fried chicken they’ve ever tasted.

Temple, the freshman guard and defensive specialist, something along the lines of UCLA’s Arron Afflalo, can describe his Baton Rouge buddies in just a few words.

“I’m the smart one that will make little side comments on things,” he said. “Glen, he loves the media and with his personality he loves all the attention he can get. Tasmin is the quiet one, he won’t talk to you much. Tyrus is both sides of the spectrum. You just never know what to expect from him.

“I know Glen the best because he didn’t have a father figure in his life and my dad filled the role. We helped him get ready to take the SAT and ACT tests. He really is my brother.”

Temple also spoke of the weeks after Hurricane Katrina had devastated New Orleans. Although none of the Tigers suffered personal or family losses during the tragedy, most of the team spent time at the LSU arena and football stadium, which had become temporary places for New Orleans residents to gather and receive medical treatment.

“It was an eye-opening experience,” Temple said. “We all grew up a little.”

“Glen was one of the first people to go over,” Tasmin Mitchell said. “He went over to help people. He was holding an IV bag for a person and the person died while he was holding the bag. It shook him up. He came back to the room and he was crying. We embraced and decided we were all going over and help those people.

“That experience brought us all even closer together.”

Thomas said one benefit of the intertwined friendships is that there is no jealousy. He doesn’t mind if Davis gets 25 points and all the attention and Davis doesn’t mind if Thomas gets five blocked shots, 13 rebounds and is named player of the game.

“Glen, Tasmin and I, we live together,” Thomas said. “We’re together 24-7. The off-court bond, it helps us on the court too. We all have love for each other. We’re unselfish, we don’t care who scores. That’s a big part of our success, that we’re unselfish. No one cares about the stat sheets. No one cares about the highlights. We just care about the wins.”

As Collis Temple stood to the side last Saturday, one by one the Tigers came to hug him.

“For you,” Davis said. “This is for you.”

“Thank you,” Tasmin Mitchell whispered.

“Final Four,” Thomas shouted as he offered Temple a high-five.

Assistant coach John Treloar patted Temple on the back and said, “Way to go.”

“This is so special,” Temple said. “Because these kids are homegrown. They stay together, they love each other. Maybe it’s a little more special because of that.”