DAVIS HAS BECOME A BIG DEAL LSU STAR'S PERSONALITY IS AS HUGE AS HIS ABILITY.

Byline: Ramona Shelburne Staff Writer

INDIANAPOLIS - He's become the face of this year's Final Four; braces, backward cap, yellow boa and all.

All 6-foot-9, 310 pounds of him.

You don't normally call a guy that size a Big Baby and expect to walk away with all your limbs intact.

But this Big Baby loves it.

``I've grown to love it,'' LSU's Glen ``Big Baby'' Davis said of his nickname. ``I'm a nice guy. So it depends on how you use it. If you use it (wrong), yeah, I'll have to regulate.''

He picked up the nickname as a kid. He was big even then. And when he went to play football, he was too big to play with the kids his age so he had to play with kids two or three years older.

``I used to get beat up, banked on, picked on a lot. I was whining,'' he explained. ``My coach was just like, 'Stop crying, you big baby.' He just said it every day. I won't never forget that.''

Actually, most people assume its a takeoff on the nickname of another LSU big man with an oversized personality, Shaquille O'Neal, who likes to refer to himself - among other things - as ``Big Daddy.''

But for Davis, Bib Baby just fits. He's childlike at times with a spirit that's all Mardi Gras. He's become the unofficial spokesman and comedian, for LSU during the NCAA Tournament.

As one scribe who covers the team regularly put it, ``he's like a walking quote machine.''

On Friday afternoon at LSU's media session here at the RCA Dome, Big Baby was in rare form.

He opened the session with a minute-long monologue filled with one-liners that would have made David Letterman's writers proud.

``I'm just trying to soak it up, you know, take it in ... act my weight, not my age basically,'' he said. ``I don't want to get too excited like a kid you know. ... You look at that, you're like, 'Oh, my God, Final Four. Get excited, start hyperventilating.

``You don't get this to win one of the immortality trophies, that's what I call it. You won the trophy, you live forever, basically. ''

It went on like this a while longer. The room roared in laughter. His teammates snickered in the background.

Finally, the moderator stepped in, turning the question over to senior guard Darrel Mitchell. Poor Mitchell, having to follow that act. he did his best.

``Are you done yet?'' Mitchell asked Big Baby.

The room was cavernous, the stage two times as big as it needed to be, but Big Baby seemed too big for it.

As big as he is now, it's hard to imagine him any larger. Coming out of high school, however, he was closer to 370 pounds. When he came to LSU, Tigers coach John Brady asked him to see a nutritionist, which has helped him get down to his current weight of 310 pounds.

On Friday, he was asked to elaborate on that diet.

``You ever watch Fear Factor?'' he said, smiling. ``You see this nasty food, but you want to eat it ... cause you can get a lot of money? That's how I took it.''

``But it's tough. The nutrition part is really, really hard because of the habits I used to have.''

Some critics have questioned his ability to move so gracefully at 310 pounds, so you can imagine what college recruiters must have thought when he was 370.

A couple of weeks ago, he was asked if Duke ever recruited him. He said that he first met Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski at an AAU tournament, but Krzyzewski didn't pay attention to the ``chubby fat kid eating cookies.''

Told of the story, Krzyzewski bristled.

``It'd be hard to not know who he was,'' Krzyzewski said last week, before LSU upset his No. 1-seeded team. ``Of course I knew who he was. ... I mean, stories like that are nice stories, OK. He's a hell of a player. I knew who he was. I still know who he is, and I respect who he is. If I knew he wanted to go to Duke, I would have looked at him a little closer.

But the more you get to know Davis, the more you realize that LSU, like his nickname, just fits him.

For a state that has endured the double tragedy of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the last year, he has become a symbol of hope. Someone who feels pain acutely, but has the character to rise above it.

After Katrina, Davis and several other LSU players went down to the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, where some of the most critical victims of Katrina were being treated. Davis was pressed into duty as a human IV stand during an emergency tracheotomy.

Afterward, he went back to his dorm room and cried.

``It has changed my course of life, as far as what I want to do and what's my purpose on Earth,'' he said.

Behind all the laughter is a sensitive kid who probably could have cried a lot more. His mother was addicted to drugs, and he bounced around from foster homes to shelters growing up.

In high school, he moved in with his AAU teammate and friend Garrett Temple and his father, Collis Temple Jr. But Davis is still close with his mom. He's forgiven her, and winks at her in the stands during games.

``Glen Davis' mother, if you meet her, you can tell exactly where Glen Davis gets his personality,'' Brady said. ``Everybody has their shortcomings. But Glen loves his mother and his mother loves him tremendously. When you meet his mom and you're around her, with whatever has gone on with her, you can tell exactly why Glen Davis is like he is.''

Ramona Shelburne, [phone]

ramona.shelburne(at)dailynews.com

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Glen ``Big Baby'' Davis has become a star during the NCAA Tournament.

Ann Heisenfelt/Associated Press