HOLT — Michigan State freshman Julius Avent wasn’t the draw when the Moneyball Pro-Am summer basketball league began this week. But after two nights of games, he’s the buzz.
The least-hyped player in the Spartans’ incoming class is making it impossible not to notice him. It’s not just the 40 points he scored Thursday, on top of 30 on Tuesday — the pro-am over the years has had its share of high scorers from MSU who barely cracked the Spartans’ rotation. It’s the purpose with which he plays.
“Definitely a little bit of a chip on my shoulder, you know, being the most under-ranked player in the class, trying to prove myself every day in practice, games, anything,” Avent said Thursday evening at Holt High School, after his second straight eye-opening performance.
“I’m just playing, getting my shots up, working on my game, and, you know, just doing what I do.”
In an earlier era of Spartan basketball, or even on another team, Avent’s early promise might be a godsend — perhaps the way Andre Hutson unexpectedly was as a freshman for Tom Izzo’s first Big Ten championship team, 10 years before Avent was born. On this team, it’s a bonus.
He’s a 6-foot-7, 225-pound 4-man and wing, who will battle for playing time at power forward with Cam Ward, Kaleb Glenn and Jesse McCulloch, and perhaps on the wing with Coen Carr, Jordan Scott and Glenn. So cracking the rotation will take some doing. But nobody who’s watched him play this week will be surprised if he carves out a role for himself in Year 1.
“There’s a lot of confidence (with him),” Scott said of Avent. “We have four freshmen and I think he was the lowest-rated out of all the four freshmen. (I’m) just trying to let him know, rankings don’t matter. None of that matters in college. Everybody can hoop. So you just play to your skill set, everything will come. I mean, it happened last year for me.”
RELATED: Couch: MSU basketball’s Cam Ward and Jordan Scott return with muscle — and big intentions
Scott went from a perceived redshirt candidate to a starter. A year earlier, Jase Richardson went from battling for a place in the rotation preseason to leading the Spartans to a Big Ten title and Elite Eight, and then into the NBA draft. In both cases, we saw early in the season just how good they were.
“Julius, I think he’s the sleeper (among the freshmen),” Ward said. “He reminds me a lot of Jordan when he first came — kind of quiet, kind of just stayed to himself, but he makes all the right plays.”
Avent may or may not be ready for that sort of eye-opening start. But he’s definitely piqued some curiosity. In part, because he has such a forceful and physical game.
It’s what you might expect from the son of former NBA power forward Anthony Avent, who’s a couple inches taller than his son — though Julius doesn’t lack for wingspan. He measured in at 7-foot-3 inches finger tip to finger tip at last summer’s Top 100 Camp.
“If I put my arms out, I’m a 7-footer,” Avent said.
He sees himself as a three-level scorer. There’s evidence he could be that at some point at MSU. He’s a capable outside shooter, but getting downhill for a pull-up or layup is where he stands out. We’ll see whether he’s strong enough and tall enough to score as a bully at the rim in the Big Ten. He looks stronger than most players who’ve just turned 19. And he has the shoulders to add significant muscle.
The last three weeks, since arriving at MSU from New Jersey, have been his first weeks seriously weight-training, However, via his dad’s advice, he’s been doing 50 pushups a day since he was young. If that doesn’t seem like a Herschel Walker regimen, I’d encourage you to watch other long-armed basketball players under a bench press. Sometimes the bar is too much.
He’s also been “getting accustomed to the pace, building my stamina up even more, and just learning the game, being a student of the game, crashing the boards, doing the little things first,” he said.
And, in front of a fan base that’s getting their first look at him, turning himself into an intriguing prospect beyond his billing.
“What I want to get out of the year, I want to at first just earn my way up, earn my minutes on the court first, and then just work from there, seeing where it goes from there,” Avent said.
We’re all now a little curious to see.
Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on X @Graham_Couch and BlueSky @GrahamCouch.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Couch: Michigan State freshman Julius Avent is turning heads at the Moneyball Pro-Am
Reporting by Graham Couch, Lansing State Journal / Lansing State Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Graham Couch, Lansing State Journal | USA TODAY Network
