Photos by Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times

Virginia Tech senior Cheick Diakite (34) ranks second in blocked shots and fifth in rebounding for the Hokies' men's basketball team.

Cheick Diakite (34) has started 11 games for Virginia Tech and averages 3.7 points per game.

BLACKSBURG -- Perhaps you come from a big family.

Odds are Cheick Diakite comes from a bigger one.

Diakite, a center on the Virginia Tech men's basketball team, has more than 20 brothers and sisters.

The senior reserve is from the West African nation of Mali, where polygamy is common. His late father had three wives.

"We have a huge family, so we have to eat rice to be able to feed everybody," he said.

Diakite -- actually, Cheick Oumar Tidiane Diakite -- liked having so many siblings he could count on.

"Whatever you need, if they have it ... they will give you," he said. "You are part of the family.

"That's why if you get the opportunity to come to [the] USA to get your degree, you really [need] ... to be looking to be successful in order to help them."

Basketball has provided the 6-foot-9, 217-pound Diakite with that opportunity.

Diakite is from Mali's capital, Bamako. He lived a few blocks from Nare Diawara, who played for the Tech women's basketball team from 2003-07.

He grew up playing his country's most popular sport, soccer.

But by the age of 15, he was 6-1. He had a friend whose sister is current WNBA player Hamchetou Maiga. Maiga, then playing for Old Dominion, suggested he might want to switch to basketball.

"Basketball? That's a ladies' sport," he told her. "I can't play that."

But you are tall, Maiga told him. She said he would have a chance to succeed in basketball, and it would give him a chance to go to America.

So he gave it a try. He liked it, and eventually made the Mali junior national team.

Tech assistant Ryan Odom learned of Diakite from a Mali native Odom had coached at American University.

Odom e-mailed Diakite, who then had to get the message translated.

Diakite spoke two languages, Bambara and French. He hadn't paid much attention when English was taught in school.

"I never thought I was going to come here," he said with a grin.

Diakite would need to learn English, and take the SAT. Odom recommended he attend Bridgton Academy in North Bridgton, Maine.

From Mali to Maine

Thanks to a scholarship, Diakite joined the Bridgton postgraduate team for the 2004-05 season.

"I could not speak English," Diakite said. "It was not easy.

"But if you have a goal, you have to go get it."

So Diakite worked on his vocabulary and his assignments every day with the school's librarian at the time, Linda Kautz. They became quite close.

"He worked extremely hard," said Kautz, who was in the stands to cheer on Diakite last weekend when the Hokies visited Boston College. "Little by little, he picked up the language.

"It was a hard year, but he was never a person to say, 'Oh, this is just too hard.'"

Blocking shots? Now, that wasn't hard.

"When he got here, he was blocking every shot in the gym [at practice], and three quarters of them were goaltending," Bridgton coach Whit Lesure said. "Guys were crying about it. I said, 'Hey, there ain't no goaltending this year, fellas. He can go after whatever he wants.' "

Diakite was too scrawny, though. He weighed just 198 pounds.

So he hit the weight room and gained 30 pounds.

"There hasn't been any more determined individual that has [ever] come here," Lesure said. "He prayed in his bedroom, and other than that, lived in the weight room."

Diakite, like most people in Mali, is a Muslim.

He missed Mali, especially when the Maine weather turned cold.

Too cold.

He phoned his mother and said he couldn't handle it.

"You've got to be strong," she told him. "You've got to get used to it. Nothing comes to you easy."

Diakite averaged 10 points and nine rebounds that season. He signed with Tech in April 2005.

Helping the Hokies

Diakite started the first 11 games of this season for the Hokies (14-7, 4-3 ACC) before losing his job to freshman Victor Davila.

But he is averaging more minutes in conference games than Davila, and was a valuable asset off the bench in several games in January.

He had five points and five rebounds in last month's win over Virginia, and had eight points and five rebounds in Tech's upset of Wake Forest.

"Cheick gives us some toughness," coach Seth Greenberg said. "He gives us a physical presence. He protects the front of the rim. He's improved offensively -- he's catching the ball better."

Diakite ranks fifth on the Hokies in rebounds (3.6 rpg) and second in blocks (1.4 bpg). His offensive game is limited; he is averaging 3.7 points and 16.1 minutes.

"I give Coach Greenberg credit -- he improve my basketball," he said. "He always yell at me, but ... if he yell at you, he wants you to be successful. If Coach doesn't yell at you ... he doesn't care about you."

Sometimes, Diakite lies in bed and feels frustrated because he wants to succeed in basketball so much. He spends a lot of his free time in the gym, trying to hone the game he picked up just eight years ago.

"He's a productive player in the best conference in college basketball," Greenberg said. "I know he wishes he was doing more, but I think he's doing a lot of really good things."

Diakite plans to graduate from Tech in May.

"He's a diligent student who has embraced the opportunity to get an American education," Greenberg said. "In a lot of ways, it's a great success story."

Last summer, Diakite returned to Mali for a 10-day visit. It was his first time there since he left for Maine in 2004.

He plans to live there again, but not just yet. He would like to play professionally in Europe, so he can earn money for his family.