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Markovic will play basketball for Missouri Southern
From Montenegro to Bloomfield to Missouri.
Aleksa Markovic will play basketball at Missouri Southern next fall. A transfer student from Montenegro, Markovic helped the Bloomfield Cardinals make their run to the Washington Semistate last season.
Missouri Southern is in Joplin, Mo., located in southwestern Missouri, right on the Missouri-Oklahoma state line. Last season, the Lions finished with a 25-8 mark and a trip to the NCAA Division II Sweet Sixteen.
“I couldn’t get anything better than Missouri Southern,” Markovic said. He explained he came to the United States to go to college. “They are Division II. I never thought I would play higher than junior college.”
“He fit right in,” Bloomfield coach Ron McBride said. “He just made the team like everyone else.”
Markovic shot 55.0 percent from the field and 73.5 percent from the line as he averaged 10.6 points per game. He led Bloomfield in steals with 48, averaged 5.4 rebounds per game, and blocked 18 shots for the Cardinals. He not only made the All-Southwest Indiana Athletic Conference first team, he was named Most Valuable Player of the Clay City All-Sectional team.
McBride noted Markovic’s defense might be an asset to the Lions. Last season, they held their foes to 77.4 ppg.
“He can guard a smaller guy or a guy his size,” the coach said. “That’s one thing that might help.”
He added that Markovic had to adjust to a different style of basketball at Bloomfield. After the Cards won the Clay City Sectional, Markovic said he played basketball at a much faster pace in Montenegro.
“He made an awful lot of adjustments to us,” McBride said. He described another of Markovic’s intangible assets. “He’s a very coachable kid.”
Markovic said he will be an outside player at Missouri Southern.
“I was talking to coach (Jeff) Boschee, and he said I would be an outside player like I was in my country,” Markovic said. “I love playing way back. I love facing the basket.”
As a Cardinal, he said he had to learn to play inside.
“It was tough at first,” Markovic said. “I remember coach McBride getting mad because I would get outside and push it too fast. We figured it out pretty well.”
He said he will study business at Missouri Southern. He said he wanted to study a subject “that would be good back in my country.”
Markovic departed the country Tuesday to return to Montenegro. He said he was “going to get my visa and see my family.” He said he has not seen them since he came to the United States.
“It’s too expensive” for them to visit this country, Markovic explained, but they were able to watch all of his games on the Greene County Sports Network.
This summer, Markovic said, he will work on his game, especially shooting the three. That will help this fall, he said, because the Lions are “more explosive” and put up a lot of trifectas.
The Lions averaged 86.7 ppg last season and certainly put up the triples. As a team, they shot 359-966 (37.2 percent) from three-point land.
“They play fast basketball with a lot of threes and that’s what I like,” Markovic said. “That’s how I used to play back in my country.”
Bloomfield’s victories in the Clay City Sectional and the Martinsville Regional stand out in his memory, Markovic said. So does playing before about 7,000 people in the Hatchet House at the Washington Semistate.
“I never played before that big a crowd before,” he said. “That was pretty amazing. I’ll always remember that.”
However, he said his fondest memory of last season was simply being a Cardinal.
“First of all, being a Bloomfield Cardinal,” he replied when asked what were some of the highlights of last year. ‘It’s a big honor considering Bloomfield’s history.”