Development. It’s the thing that Arizona head coach Adia Barnes talks about the most. It’s what’s important to her as a basketball coach. It was also important to freshman Katarina Knežević when she was deciding on her next basketball stop.
“Arizona coaches’ philosophy really suits me because, as I said, they’re trying to win, but besides that, they want to make something that’s going to last longer,” Knežević said. “They want to build players. They want to start from that fundamental base and to build everything from there…Even though we can do many fancy things, you can see that even in practices, they really care about our development. That’s what I love.”
Knežević has been challenging herself and looking for development for most of her short career. The Serbian national said that the level of competition isn’t currently what she’d like to see in her home country. Despite producing some of the best male players in the world, the women’s program has taken a downturn.
“Volleyball is the most famous, let’s say, ‘female sport,’ but basketball was really, really huge,” she said. “I think in the 2010s, that was the major time for women’s basketball in Serbia, and it just started falling apart, which is not really a good thing. A lot of players that are like 20 plus years old, they’re going in other European countries to play because teams are better. Everything’s better.”
To address that level of competition, Knežević spent last season playing alongside professionals in Spain.
“I got an offer, so I was really interested in trying a new environment,” Knežević said. “And also I wanted to see if I have all the abilities to play that level. I’m not saying that I don’t have abilities. I’m just saying that I don’t have experience. That’s why I decided to come [to] college and to try to fulfill my career here. Because…I actually never saw a player that can do some extra things. I can do all of the things that they can do, but they just have more experience than me. They’re more physical. They have bigger bodies. They play better defensively in terms of they know how to play. And so that’s the reason why I actually wanted to go [to Spain] and see if that’s any different.”
Among the players on her Spanish team was former Wildcat Jade Loville.
“She’s a great shooter,” Knežević said. “She gave me advice. For example, whenever I have days where I couldn’t make a basket, she was like, ‘Just shoot!’ Which actually suits her because she just shoots. That really gave me encouragement to just shoot. Should it be more? Who cares if I miss?”
Shooting is one thing Barnes mentioned when discussing Knežević. It’s something that Arizona has been a bit lacking in for much of her tenure. It wasn’t all the coach was impressed by.
“Katarina is really good,” Barnes said. “And she was a phenomenal soccer player, just started playing basketball a couple years ago and is really skilled. And she’s tough and physical. Great body. So I was excited about her. Most of the time those kind of players go pro. and so when we got her I was just like, ‘Wow, that’s a really good get.’”
Knežević describes herself as a perimeter player. Despite being six feet tall and listed as a forward on Arizona’s roster, she considers herself more of a guard, saying she primarily plays the two or three position.
“You’re expanding your court vision more [on the perimeter],” she said. “You have so much more options from the outside game, in my opinion. You have so many things that you have to watch. For example, how the post is moving. For example, how the opposite post is defending that post, and then also the defender right there in front of you. You have to also think about it, but don’t think about it because you have to think about so many other things. So, it’s really just a creative process in my head.”
The devotion Knežević has to basketball is unique in her family. She spent her childhood playing soccer against her older brother in the backyard. She loved the competition even in those backyard games even if it wasn’t especially important in her family.
“My mother and my father never played any sports,” she said. “Let’s say I don’t come from an athletic family.”
Even in her extended family, she stood out as the one who was always outside playing with a ball of some sort, whether that was soccer or basketball. That love started at a young age but in a less structured way than many American kids experience.
“In school, you’re just playing with other people, with other classmates, whatever,” Knežević said. “So just the competitive nature of that, I always wanted to be better than them. Because in Serbia, there’s no system like it is in the US, because, for example, we don’t have school teams because there’s just school. We also have P.E. class but that’s not something that’s really important.”
The games were really important to her, though.
“It feels kind of liberating for me to play sports,” she said. “It is like everything that you feel…you just let it all out through sports.”
The school part was really important, as well. It is just more difficult in many European countries, including Serbia. Knežević attended the Philological High School of Belgrade where she said students took as many as 16 classes.
“[It’s] a gymnasium that is specialized for languages,” she said. “So I had all of the humanities all the time. I learned Latin for four years, German, also English, literature, philosophy, psychology, all the humanities. I mean, I love my high school. I love it because that’s something that I would definitely study if I don’t have it.”
She will study psychology at Arizona. She believes the integration of sports and education makes it much easier for European student-athletes in U.S. colleges.
“In Serbia, that is so hard because school doesn’t care about your off-school activities,” she said. “And clubs…sometimes as you get older, they’re like, ‘We don’t care about school.’ So it’s really hard to manage both because, for example, sometimes you’re going to have a practice that’s at the time when you have school, which is not something that should be like that because you don’t want to miss practices and also you don’t want to miss classes. School is, in my opinion, it was always more important because especially as a woman, as a female person, it’s so important to be educated…because after your basketball career, it is not gonna be like a male basketball career. We have to accept it.”
However, the club-based system does provide opportunities for younger athletes to train and play with professionals. That has its own advantages.
“It’s a club system, for example, from the like cadets, juniors, all these generations, but it grows up,” Knežević said. “As you’re growing up, as you’re getting in the older age, it kind of transfers to professional clubs. When you’re a junior, you’re gonna play with two generations. Or once you get to like 18 years old, you’re playing with everybody…like a senior team when you [play with] a person that’s like 30 years old. So there’s a lot of experience that you can get from them.”
That experience is helpful when you return to compete against your own age group in international competitions.
“When you’re playing with older players, you are becoming an older player, because you have to be so much more mature,” Knežević said. “You have to set yourself on their level, which is hard, but also it’s really helpful when you come to that stage where you’re competing with your age.”
The European clubs have a very different atmosphere than what players find in American college programs. They are much more serious, especially at the professional level. Knežević is adapting as she learns about the college game.
“Obviously, first week is always confused, but we’ll learn everything,” she said. “Everything is new, like the system of plays, the system of practicing. Players are different. They have different habits. They have different ways of behaving themselves. It’s so much different because in Serbia…you’re not talking that much…Here, they’re also working really hard, but they’re free. You can see them dancing. Like what is this? You know, I never saw something [like that] because in Serbia there is no music at practices. There’s no nothing. It’s really different, but I was aware of it when I came here. I came prepared. I knew that they’re gonna do some different things. So, it’s really cool.”
What’s a bit more challenging to get used to is the way the women’s college game is officiated. It was something Barnes mentioned when discussing the incoming class, especially because of the physicality Knežević plays with.
Knežević is trying to learn those differences as quickly as she can. She believes she has the ability and the flexibility to do it. Her flexibility, confidence, and passion will be as important to her success as anything.
“I can do anything,” she said. “Sometimes in games, not everything is going well. I mean, one thing that you’re good at isn’t going well. For example, if my shot is just off one day, I know…that I can do so many things besides that. It’s going to contribute to the win…At least, I can play defense. It’s a bit hard to play here because everything is a foul and I’m not really used to them because in Europe, basketball is just so much more physical and so much more things are allowed to do on the court. But I would say that something that really differentiates my game from other players is the ability to adjust to every game. I’m always going to be fired up with that passion, with a fire in my lungs, adrenaline all the time.”
One thing Knežević is adapting fairly quickly to is her new desert home. She said the summers got kind of hot in Serbia, so that doesn’t bother her. She likes that Arizona lacks the humidity she dealt with in Spain last year.
“It was really hard to breathe and that was a problem, but here is okay,” she said.
Most importantly, she looks forward to taking full advantage of everything being a student-athlete entails.
“They told me it is really great,” Knežević said. “Like, everything is scheduled. You have time for everything and everybody understands that you have so many responsibilities throughout one day. So I think that’s one of the really great things because it gives you kind of like encouragement to do it. And also, in my opinion, it’s really, really nice to have everything in one place because I do love studying also. Besides basketball, I do love exploring so many things. I do love discussing all these things that you study, that you’re interested in.”
