I’ve watched two games. I just saw the game against France. He’s a decent player; plays hard and with passion. But, he’s far from The Savior that someone on this site might have him pegged for. Free-throw percentage is miserable. But, that poor statistic applies to the entire Greek team. I am hopeful that with good coaching he’ll up his game. It’s hard to believe that he was even remotely considered a second rounder. I just don’t see it…maybe in due time. At this point, he may be a slightly above average ACC player…he will not be a star next year. I hope I am wrong. ** Edited by HokieInDenmark at 7/20/2025, 6:55:09 PM

He seems to have everyone else on board, including industry professionals

It's going to come from helping his teammates shoot 3-4% better because he's on the floor and draws more focus from the opposing defense. It's going to come from better passes that set up more offensive scoring opportunities. And, it'll come from having a go-to-player in crunch time situations, which is something our team lacked last season. If you watch him expecting him to look like Lebron James against a bunch of 5th graders, you're going in with way, way too high of expectations. He's going to be an immensely positive force on this team in ways that only subtly show up in the stat sheet.

14 ppg, 7.1 rpg, 8 apg. Those numbers include a triple-double, and they also include one game where he barely played (10 mins) to save energy for the knockout rounds. Throw out that game, and you're looking at 15+ ppg, 8+ rpg, and even more assists. He took an average of 11.5 shots per game...again, including the game when he only played 10 minutes and thus only took five shots, so probably more like 13-14 shots per game on average. He probably won't average quite that many shots per game at Tech. He'll be more like Mutts at around 10 per game (I think) albeit at a different position). His FT% of 65.7%...not great of course, but certainly not miserable as you said. Again, Mutts was 61.3% for his career at Virginia Tech, so Avdalas could already be ahead of him there and he hasn't even set foot on campus yes. FYI, he was a 73.3% FT shooter in the Greek league this year, a 49.3% 2-point shooter, and a 39.3% three-point shooter, which indicates that over an entire season he's a slightly better shooter than he showed at the World Cup where you play a game every other day. He finished third overall in efficiency rate (19.3), first in +/- (+122), and first in +/- per game (17.4). The only player remotely close to him in all three of those categories combined was one of his own teammates. You can make a strong argument that he was the best player at the entire tournament. Some of the advanced metrics suggest that he was.

Tournament, I think his TO could have been higher (and assists lower) in the early stages of the tournament as he and his teammates were getting used to playing together. What do you think?

Mike is the man!