Monday Thoughts: New Fame

Will Stewart

November 10, 2025 20

Neoklis Avdalas Virginia Tech — The glow of fame has found Neoklis Avdalas. (Jon Fleming)

Welcome to a little different Monday Thoughts (but aren’t they all?). Today, I’m going to talk about Hokies men’s basketball’s freshman phenom, Neoklis Avdalas, and then fill you in on Tech Sideline’s ongoing issues with our platform.

Neoklis, Indeed

Here’s a little factoid you can use to impress your friends. According to names.org:

Neoklis is a masculine given name of Greek origin, formed from neo- “new” and klḗs/kléos “glory, renown,” thus meaning “new glory” or “new fame.”

How appropriate, because Virginia Tech freshman phenom Neoklis Avdalas has suddenly found himself with new glory and new fame around the college basketball world after dropping 33 points, five rebounds, six assists, one block, one steal and just two turnovers in Saturday’s win over Providence.

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20 Comments

dconeill November 11, 2025 at 8:22 AM

As a subscriber and lurker that LOVES TSL, the staff and my hokie sports. I’m happy to lend my time to fellow Hokies that need any cyber help I can provided if yall want any - I have 10 years in the tech cyber side of things, and mitigating these types of things is all about systematically shifting to things that can provide the protections you need - typically it comes down to the basics, like getting it hosted in aws that has does native ddis protections, a waf, and if you have to, something like an aws shield that can adapt aws ddos protections more granularly. It could be you’re doing all these things already, but I’m happy to lend time and advice if yall want or need any sanity checks or guidance I can offer. Avidalas is going to be a program changer. Can’t wait for a fun football season and a major correction for the administration and
knapnhokie November 10, 2025 at 10:35 PM

Will this ongoing IT stuff sounds like somebody with a deep personal grudge. I wouldn't be against paying a little more to follow MKD's advice and get some Cyber security outsiders to clean up and identify the punk that's pulling this crap. Catch em and shut em down turn em over to our FBI and NSA friends. Who knows what else they are up to. I'll pitch in on $$ front
1. pharlap_99 November 11, 2025 at 3:39 AM
  
  The core subs on TSL could get together and raise some $$ to hire a few of the top shelf CS folks. I am not loaded but TSL has provided me w/over 25 years of entertainment. Certainly would prefer helping TSL over paying hundreds monthly for the "required" 40+ streaming platforms :) Whatever happens, I truly appreciate TSL and hope the issues can be resolved asap.
Arch72Hokie November 10, 2025 at 8:13 PM

Avdalas in a PG? I'd say he poses matchup problems. Where/how did Mike Young find him?
1. MYNAMEISHOKIE November 10, 2025 at 11:14 PM
  
  There was a bit about that in David Cunningham's article from a few months ago (and probably mentioned in some other articles I'm forgetting): https://virginiatech.sportswar.com/subscription/2025/06/18/addition-avdalas-puts-bow-on-hokies-offseason-roster-reconstruction/ Long story short, it came from hiring Chester Frazier back because Frazier ended up having a friend of a friend that was Avdalas's agent, and it took off from there.
VTBuck20 November 10, 2025 at 6:26 PM

I have long wished for the opportunity to grab hackers and scammers by the ankles and beat them violently against a brick wall.
1. DW Hokie November 10, 2025 at 7:10 PM
  
  There's nothing more cowardly than hacking/scamming. Perhaps, instead of targeting the ankles ...
  1. VTBuck20 November 10, 2025 at 10:37 PM
    
    I want to grab the ankles and beat their faces against the wall, just to clarify.
    1. gemrooty November 11, 2025 at 11:33 AM
      
      Or have them grab their OWN ankles…
Hokester November 10, 2025 at 6:09 PM

I know how frustrating all this programming stuff must & it must drive you crazy. However, even though I have encountered the issues you describe, they have never been debilitating enough to keep me from using the sight. That means to me that you and your crew work very hard to fix things and to fix them as quickly as you can. Here is an off the top of my head suggestion. VT must have some excellent computer brains (both faculty & students) that you could resource to help solve these programming problems. Just a thought. Now back to our regularly scheduled program. Watching the Hokies against Providence the other night was pure joy and seeing Neo put on the show he did was exhilarating. This team has the looks of something special. If Franklin comes, the future will be even brighter.
I-W-K-Y-I-T-N November 10, 2025 at 5:05 PM

Raise your price and eliminate the free boards. Then when they crate all the fake stuff you make $$.
1. hokiehowl November 11, 2025 at 9:50 AM
  
  I like that idea.
TomTurkey November 10, 2025 at 5:00 PM

Been with you from the beginning. Ain't going anywhere. Believe me, TSL runs rings around through Intuit and xfinity, whose customer service is assistant and recording bots.
vbfan November 10, 2025 at 4:38 PM

Isn't that a double dribble at the 8 seconds mark of the Neo video?
1. HOKIE SEAN November 11, 2025 at 1:25 PM
  
  Nice catch. That was a double dribble. And the ref trailing right behind just plain missed it.
MKD November 10, 2025 at 4:10 PM

A possible solution. You can contract Cybersecurity experts on demand. They're phenomenal and usually find and fix most problems rather quickly. $100-300 per hour. Most have an app where you can just click to obtain their services. A lot of companies use this type service instead of a full IT director.
1. IB4TECH November 10, 2025 at 4:46 PM
  
  That's a great suggestion.
AnotherTechW November 10, 2025 at 3:59 PM

Any idea who this D-bag is and why he’s doing it? The unhinged guy who came after you? A sore loser from UVA? Some random rival?
PumpAndGo November 10, 2025 at 3:58 PM

I see you got my Greek lesson of the day ;-)
HokieDelNorte November 10, 2025 at 3:53 PM

Why would someone (many) in Europe do this sort of thing? Are they profiting somehow or is it personal?

Monday Thoughts: New Fame

Neoklis, Indeed

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