“We fell into him kind of at the last second,” Indian Hills Community College (Ottumwa, IA) head coach Hank Plona said, recalling guard Tomas Woldetensae’s road to IHCC.

Woldetensae, a 6’5”, 195-pound guard and now University of Virginia men’s basketball commitment, spent the first three years of high school in his native country of Italy before transferring to Victory Rock Prep in Florida, where he spent two years, including a postgraduate year. He signed with the University of Missouri-Kansas City as a member of the class of 2017; however, he couldn’t get through the NCAA Clearinghouse and decided to enroll at Indian Hills C.C.

It didn’t take long for Plona to realize he had a good one.

“I will tell you the first day I saw him on the floor I thought he was a mid-major to a high-major player,” Plona said of Woldetensae. “Coming in here, for sure he was underrated.”

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