SEC surprise: Mississippi St. takes risks for an unstoppable frontcourt

College basketball's offseason has belonged to Kentucky, whose title-starved fans have been celebrating John Calipari, John Wall and everything in between. There is more than one intriguing story in the SEC, though, and in a saner spring, Mississippi State might have been a national focal point, with its acquisitions of two elite high-school big men (one mysterious, one controversial) and a potential All-America center pulling out of the NBA draft.

If everything works out, the Bulldogs could have a frontcourt that rivals, or surpasses, the Wildcats'. But there's no guarantee that this will be the case.

The sure thing: Junior center Jarvis Varnado, who's averaged a nation-leading 163.5 blocks over the past two seasons -- was over at Mississippi State coach Rick Stansbury's house a week ago for cake and ice cream, and Stansbury was understandably relieved that the occasion wasn't a farewell party.

Varnado put his name on the NBA draft's early-entry list on April 27, and was hardly shunned by the league, earning an invite to the pre-draft combine in Chicago on May 27, and several invites for teams' private workouts. Initial appraisals of his draft stock put him anywhere from the end of the first round to going undrafted, though, and at 6-foot-9 and just 205 pounds, he wasn't convinced he was physically ready for the pros. The more he thought and prayed about the situation, he said, "I had a feeling that it just wasn't right. I didn't want to leave a bad impression on NBA scouts at workouts."

Varnado opted to pull his name out of the draft pool on May 11, just two weeks after declaring. He's determined to add bulk to his slight frame during his senior campaign, during which time he'll need just 19 more blocks to break Shaquille O'Neal's career SEC record of 412, and 142 more to break the NCAA record of 535, set by Louisiana-Monroe's Wojciech Mydra from 1999 to 2002. "I wasn't going to try to talk him out of coming back," Stansbury said of Varnado, who helped lead the team to an SEC tournament title last season. "He was in a position where he didn't need to roll the dice."

Having Varnado in the fold makes it easier to justify taking chances on filling out the rest of the Bulldogs' frontcourt rotation, which is what Stansbury had already done during the spring signing period. By bringing in 7-foot-1 Sudanese center John Riek and 6-10 McDonald's All-America Renardo Sidney, Mississippi State made a splash on the recruiting scene that, if not for Calipari landing five-star point guards Eric Bledsoe and Wall, would have been the biggest development of May.

Stansbury's last two signings were noteworthy for their degree of surprise -- in the fall, neither player's expected college destination was Mississippi State -- and risk. While there's a chance Riek and Sidney could be on NBA rosters someday, there's also a chance that neither could appear on the court in Starkville this season.

The mystery recruit: Riek started out as a near-mythical figure on the summer basketball scene, showing up at the LeBron James Skills Academy in the summer of 2007 as a total unknown, and wowing onlookers to the point that he began to be considered a first-round pick for the 2008 draft. He left the Winchendon School and entered into IMG Academy's post-graduate program in Bradenton, Fla., to prepare for the draft that spring. But NBA evaluators saw a different version of him at the pre-draft camp in Orlando. "He looked broken there," one scout said of Riek. "He couldn't even run."

Riek had no choice but to pull out of the draft, and he returned to IMG, where two injuries that he was believed to have suffered in late 2007 or early 2008 -- microfractures in his tibia as well as an ACL separation from the insertion on his femur -- were finally discovered. He has yet to return to the court since those were treated, in June 2008, and was initially expected to commit to Cincinnati for the past season. His coach and trainer at IMG, Dan Barto, said Riek signed and faxed a National Letter of Intent to play for the Bearcats, but it was never official because it hadn't been signed by his guardian, Gary Lorden. Riek also experienced enrollment issues at the school, and the decision was made to re-open his recruitment this April.

Mississippi State got into the picture when it was recruiting Kyryl Natyazhko, a four-star Ukrainian center who was playing for IMG, and found out about Riek's availability. Natyazhko ended up signing with Arizona, and the Bulldogs brought Riek in for a visit. He was hosted not by basketball players, but by two Sudanese track and field athletes, Michael Chapa and Thuom Mathiang, and was introduced to three women's basketball players from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rima Kalonda, Armelie Lumanu and Chanel Mokango. Mississippi State officially announced Riek's signing on May 6, but it's uncertain whether he'll gain immediate eligibility from the NCAA clearinghouse, and unlikely that he'll be healthy enough to contribute in the fall.