YOUTH MOVEMENT INEXPERIENCE DOESN'T STOP LSU'S SUCCESS.

Byline: Ramona Shelburne Staff Writer

Collis Temple didn't need to listen to any of the experts. He didn't need to watch any pregame shows or do any research.

Temple already had a pretty good idea of who was going to win the Atlanta Regional final last Saturday between LSU and Texas.

``It was just a question of by how much they'd beat them,'' said Temple, the first African-American to play at LSU, and the father of Tigers freshman guard Garrett Temple.

Temple's background displays a heavy degree of bias, but this wasn't nepotism or college spirit talking.

Collis Temple probably knows more about this year's LSU team than anybody. He was the AAU coach for four of the Tigers' starters: sophomore forward Glen ``Big Baby'' Davis, freshman forward Tasmin Mitchell, redshirt freshman forward Tyrus Thomas and his son Garrett.

That group played together on the Lester Robinson Sports Academy Cubs based out of Baton, Rouge, La., for nearly a decade before coming to LSU.

Temple and Thomas have known each other since they were 4 years old and started playing together as 9-year-olds. Davis joined the team when he was 10, and Mitchell, who is from nearby Denham Springs, came aboard when he was 12.

They played 55 to 60 games a summer. Then hung out during the offseason. During those summers, they squared off against future Texas stars Daniel Gibson and LaMarcus Aldridge a handful of times every summer.

``No disrespect to those guys or Texas, but we'd been beating those guys for eight years,'' Collis Temple said. ``So I knew we'd beat them on Saturday. ... They were on an AAU team from Houston that we'd beat five or six times a summer.''

Temple said the Cubs averaged about 50 wins a summer and finished second or third in the 15-under, 16-under and 17-under AAU national championships.

``If they had a better coach, they'd have probably won it all,'' he joked.

Temple laughs when people try to characterize the Tigers as a young team. Experience is commonly thought to be a requisite for success in the NCAA Tournament, and the Tigers don't have much of it at the college level.

Starting guard Darrel Mitchell is the team's only senior. But when you go back as far as those four starters do, experience trumps whatever number is on your birth certificate.

``They're young guys, but as basketball players, this is a serious, veteran team,'' Temple said.

When it came time to choose a college, all four received interest from a handful of schools. Davis drew a lot of attention from North Carolina, Thomas from Miami and Virginia Tech, Temple from Stanford and Oregon and Mitchell from Kentucky.

LSU recruited all of them.

It was a big gamble that's paid off even bigger.

``It's a great feeling to play with guys you know and guys you already have established a relationship with off the court also,'' Davis said. ``It's just an understanding that we have. Not just coming from the same city. It's because we know each other and we enjoy each other's presence.''

That closeness has been a key to the Tigers' success this year.

The youth showed up a little in the beginning of the season, as LSU opened up 8-5. That was already close to the number of losses the Cubs' averaged every summer over 55 or 60 games.

LSU has gone 21-3 since.

LSU coach John Brady said there are moments when he doesn't understand what those four players are saying.

``They have their own way of communicating, their own language, that I'm not privy to, and their own way of doing things,'' Brady said.

Mitchell, the team's only senior, feels even more outnumbered sometimes.

``I'm not old, but if you consider my class, yeah, I'm a grandpa,'' he joked. ``The childhood comes out in them sometimes and they're a little immature sometimes. But As the season went on they grew up a little bit. All you can do is laugh. They have a good sense of humor and its a whole lot of fun to be around these guys.''

It's even more fun to win.

For the last couple months, LSU's young guys have been doing a lot of that.

``These guys bonded growing up,'' Collis Temple said. ``They got all the teeth worked out. They understood their roles. And fortunately, they all decided to go to LSU.''

Ramona Shelburne, [phone]

ramona.shelburne(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

photo, box

Photo:

Glen Davis, center, the rest of the LSU players may be young, but that hasn't hurt the Tigers.

Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

Box:

DIFFERENT CLASS

- Ramona Shelburne