One-Bid Wonders Features Friendship of UMaine Basketball Players

One-Bid Wonders carried a feature about the friendship of University of Maine men’s basketball teammates Zarko Valjarevic, a Serbian, and Marko Pirovic, a Croatian. While killing along ethnic lines occurred for more than a decade in the former Yugoslavia, these two are as close as brothers. Valjarevic was born in Belgrade, Serbia, in 1991, months before war was declared. Pirovic was born in 1994 to Croatian parents who had escaped to Canada. Basketball, they both said, brought them comfort. “You can tell their friendship is really deep right away,” UMaine men’s basketball coach Bob Walsh was quoted in the article. “They’re both really intelligent — it’s not like they don’t know the history: they’ve been through it, they understand the history from their country. They get along so well, they’re literally like brothers on the court and off the court.” The Bangor Daily News also published the report.