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GOLD AND BLACK ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 27, ISSUE 4 60 ery other portion of his training. He can often be seen tot- ing around random implements. One day it's a jump rope, the next a boxing glove. You half expect him to show up with a sword or some such thing one day. "He's a different type of guy," assistant coach Brandon Brantley said. "He's so determined." But he's done it all with a distinct dryness, a certain stoicism that sees him — at least publicly – rarely say more than he has to and rarely changes demeanors. After games, even, it's the same all-business sort of approach: Emotionless — contradictory to the intensity with which he plays and works — and straight to the point. Teammates swear there's another side to him. "It's Biggie on the court," Vincent Edwards said, "then Caleb off the court." "Caleb" might be more fun, but "Biggie" is a stone wall. But that wall has served him well, emblematic of the drive, determination and every synonym thereof that has made him great. All of this, all Swanigan has become, is what he explic- itly chose to make himself into. People know by now the bleakness of Swanigan's be- ginnings, the directionless-ness and abject poverty from which he came, the toll drugs and fear and desperation took on his family, the obstacles that made his own mor- bid obesity seem, well, small. All Swanigan overcame was made possible by his ad- opted father, Roosevelt Barnes. But it's been an opportunity Swanigan himself has done everything in his power to take absolute advantage of. "Sometimes when kids face adversity early in life," Brantley said, "they've got a sense that they don't want to go back to how it was. They know that if they've been blessed with a gift, that gift can give them a chance at a better life." It has for Swanigan. And will continue to. As he's dominated this season, he's started to be viewed more and more as a potential first-round NBA draft pick, likely sooner rather than later. His play this season might be the best in all of college basketball; if not, then his story is, a story that's now been mainstreamed by the parade of media who've come through West Lafayette, by the onslaught of attention his season has drawn to him and by Purdue's own promo- tional efforts on his behalf. This is a deeply personal story being told, as Swanigan well knows and accepts. But Swanigan's refusal to be a "product of his environ- ment," as he puts it, is also the sort of story they write books and make movies about. "If it helps someone in the same situation, then that's what it's all about," Swanigan said. "If they can read about it and it can motivate them to do something pos- itive, then that's the point of sharing stories like that." Through his transformation from 350-plus-pound 13-year-old mired in, essentially, hopelessness to high school All-American, USA Basketball gold medalist and college basketball superstar bound for the NBA, Swani- gan's been all business, his demeanor, at least publicly, as uncompromising as his effort. During that Michigan State game, while Swanigan laid waste to the Spartans on their home floor, the Izzone student section was left so void of compelling material to taunt Swanigan with that one student pulled a tidbit from an ESPN.com story and a relic from Swanigan's past. "Cheesecake!" he yelled. It was a dig at Swanigan's weight from years earlier and a nod to his admission that the dessert has been one of the more difficult foods for him to blacklist. "He's been through serious problems growing up," P.J. Thompson said. "Getting booed and getting made fun of, that's the least of his worries." But all that half-hearted taunt really represented was a reminder that on that night, Michigan State — its fans just as much as its players and coaches — simply had no answers for Purdue's All-American-to-be. That one student was trying to shake Swanigan, trying to crack him. It worked. After the game, when asked about it, he actually smiled. j