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Siena freshman Andres Amon during the university\u2019s annual court dedication on Thursday, July 30, 2026, at St. Anne Institute in Albany, NY. (Jim Franco\/Times Union)<\/p>\n
Jim Franco\/Times Union<\/p>\n
Siena freshman Andres Amon during the university\u2019s annual court dedication on Thursday, July 30, 2026, at St. Anne Institute in Albany, NY. (Jim Franco\/Times Union)<\/p>\n
Jim Franco\/Times Union<\/p>\n
Siena freshman Andres Amon during the university\u2019s annual court dedication on Thursday, July 30, 2026, at St. Anne Institute in Albany, NY. (Jim Franco\/Times Union)<\/p>\n
Jim Franco\/Times Union<\/p>\n
Siena freshman Andres Amon during the university\u2019s annual court dedication on Thursday, July 30, 2026, at St. Anne Institute in Albany, NY. (Jim Franco\/Times Union)<\/p>\n
Jim Franco\/Times Union<\/p>\n
ALBANY\u00a0\u2014 Proud owner of an international bronze medal, Spanish freshman center Andres Amon arrived in New York a week ago to join the Siena men\u2019s basketball program.<\/p>\n
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He had just helped Spain beat France 65-54 on July 19 to win the third-place game at the\u00a0FIBA U20 EuroBasket in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Amon had 11 points and five rebounds in the victory.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThat was, like, one of the best experiences I\u2019ve had all my life in basketball,\u201d Amon said Thursday.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a career that\u2019s just beginning. Amon, 18, was the youngest player on Spain\u2019s roster and one of the youngest in the entire tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, I\u2019ve played basketball all my life, but since I grew tall and muscular really late, I never got selected to a competitive team,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Hitting a growth spurt two years ago, Amon sprouted from 6-foot-8 to his current 7-1. He joined\u00a0Movistar Estudiantes, a top club in his hometown of Madrid. He quickly climbed\u00a0through the\u00a0program and was promoted to the Estudiantes professional team in Spain\u2019s second-tier division for a few games last season.<\/p>\n
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Siena assistant coach Matt Blue, hired by first-year head coach Nevada Smith, accompanied\u00a0Amon to Slovenia. He watched Amon play in the first three games of the EuroBasket tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s kind of unique,\u201d Blue said, “because he\u2019s only been playing for a couple of years, the sky\u2019s the limit for him. He\u2019s got huge potential.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blue said he sat with NBA scouts in Slovenia who said, \u201cOh man, we love your guy. We know he\u2019s young and he\u2019s playing 12 or 15 minutes, but he\u2019s going to be really good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later in the tournament, Amon played only three minutes in a quarterfinal victory over Germany and never got into a semifinal defeat against Serbia. However, he sparked Spain to the bronze-medal win over France.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI didn\u2019t expect to play in that game, honestly,\u201d Amon said. \u201cAnd, then, I got subbed in, and I just played hard, did what I know, like, rebounding, play hard, finishing around the rim, and things went pretty well.\u201d<\/p>\n
He averaged 5.5 points and 4.5 rebounds for the tournament.<\/p>\n
Then an assistant coach at Loyola (Md.), Blue first watched\u00a0Amon compete at the 2025\u00a0NBA Academy Games in Atlanta, a showcase for international prospects. Blue worked for the NBA Global Academy for seven years.<\/p>\n
Amon returned to Spain and averaged 10.9 points and 9.6 rebounds in the amateur third division last season before his short professional stint.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Smith, who knows Amon\u2019s agents, and Blue pursued the Spaniard\u00a0through their international contacts and signed him June\u00a0 2. Smith said Amon is Siena\u2019s best NBA prospect.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a legit 7-1,\u201d Smith said. \u201cMoves way better than most 7-footers his age. He grew a little later, which helped. He played tennis growing up, which really helped. His level of improvement from two years ago, to a\u00a0year ago, to when we started recruiting him, to now has just skyrocketed. We expect big things from him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blue, who is in charge of Siena\u2019s defense, said he expects Amon to \u201canchor\u201d the Saints at that end of the court.<\/p>\n
Amon committed to Siena before visiting the campus. He said Smith showed a lot of\u00a0interest in him and had a plan for him.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI also liked the Metro Conference,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a place where there are not such big guys, so I\u2019ll have the chance to dominate the competition and to grow my game as in (to) play fast, defend smaller players and get more versatile.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amon follows the NCAA Tournament and heard of Siena\u2019s near-upset of Duke in the first round last season.\u00a0Siena also offered Amon the opportunity to study and play basketball in the same place because Spain — like Europe, in general — doesn\u2019t have traditional college basketball.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor young players in Spain, American Division 1 basketball is the best option,\u201d Amon said. \u201cThere\u2019s a very competitive level, there\u2019s opportunities, they\u2019re a lot of teams to choose from, which there are not in Spain, unfortunately, because in Spain, professional clubs would rather sign professional, experienced players than give opportunities to the young guys.\u201d<\/p>\n
To get out of his Movistar Estudiantes contract, Amon said, he gave them a small\u00a0percentage of his name, image and likeness deal with Siena.<\/p>\n
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Amon\u2019s father, Abel, also played professional basketball in Spain.<\/p>\n
Andres Amon missed Siena\u2019s summer workouts because he was playing in Slovenia. However, he flew to New York to visit the Siena campus for the first time and get acclimated to his new program.<\/p>\n
First, he went sightseeing in New York City. He saw Times Square, Madison Square Garden and the Empire State Building.<\/p>\n
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Traveling up to Siena, Amon met his new teammates for the first time. He\u2019s flying back to Spain on Sunday and will return in three weeks to begin his first college season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always knew that it was a great place, as far as everyone told me,\u201d Amon said. \u201cSo, I\u2019m really happy that I\u2019m here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Siena freshman Andres Amon during the university\u2019s annual court dedication on Thursday, July 30, 2026, at St. Anne…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[26011,23057,26010,5851,1795,17,396],"class_list":["post-64775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-alco","tag-college-basketball","tag-college-siena","tag-latestnews","tag-local","tag-spain","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}