STORRS — If not for his 7-foot-4 stature, ex-NBA center Boban Marjanovic could have been any other member of the student section during the UConn women’s basketball team’s game against Creighton on Wednesday night at Gampel Pavilion.
The day after he attended a men’s basketball game at Villanova, Marjanovic made the trip to Storrs to watch the undefeated No. 1 Huskies rout the Bluejays 94-44 from the heart of the packed cheering section behind the court’s north basket. He quickly picked up on the UConn students’ traditions, attempting to duck behind a newspaper as the Creighton starting lineup was announced and pulling out his cellphone flashlight to wave in rhythm with the crowd during UConn’s introductions. He spent much of the game shooting photos and video on a digital camera that looked comically small in the big man’s hands.
Marjanovic, who played in the NBA from 2015-24, was in town filming content for a project with Bleacher Report and joined UConn’s student newspaper The Daily Campus as a guest reporter postgame. He sat between the student journalists at Geno Auriemma’s press conference to ask the Huskies coach the first question, and Auriemma seemed delighted to see him sitting head and shoulders above the rest of the media in the room.
“My name is Boban Marjanovic, and I am from Daily Campus,” Marjanovic said into the mic. “I have one amazing question first to open this.”
“It’s an amazing question even if you say so yourself?” Auriemma joked. “I like that.”
Boban getting in on the student section antics immediately pic.twitter.com/rd7mrw2Lnq
— Emily Adams (@eaadams6) February 12, 2026
After Marjanovic asked his questions — one about Huskies star Sarah Strong, another about the meal Auriemma would make for him after a loss — Auriemma had one of his own for the EuroLeague star.
“Do you know Jovana? The girl from Serbia coming here?” Auriemma asked. “She’s coming here next year.”
Serbian guard Jovana Popovic is one of UConn’s two signees to its 2026 recruiting class, and she will be the first-ever player from Serbia to represent the Huskies. Popovic has played professionally in her home country since 2023 and helped her club ZKK Art Basket to its first championship in the First League of Serbia in 2023-24. She was also crowned the league MVP and Best Shooter in 2024-25.
Popovic made her debut with Serbia’s senior national team at the 2025 EuroBasket tournament where she competed against several active WNBA players, and she led the junior national team to a bronze medal at the 2024 U18 EuroBasket tournament.
“(Serbians) work hard,” Marjanovic assured Auriemma with a grin.
‘A silent assassin’: What Serbian guard Jovana Popovic brings to UConn women basketball’s 2026 class
Popovic is part of a growing trend of international players at UConn. The team’s 2025 class included two international recruits in Ecuadorian forward Blanca Quinonez and Irish center Gandy Malou-Mamel, and it has sent four European players to the WNBA in the last three years — Hungarian forward Dorka Juhasz to the Minnesota Lynx and French-Mexican guard Lou Lopez-Senechal to the Dallas Wings in 2023, and Croatian guard Nika Muhl to the Seattle Storm in 2024.
“We already had a Croatian kid who almost made me quit coaching, and now we’ve got a Serbian kid, so we went from bad to worse,” Auriemma quipped, taking an affectionate shot a Muhl. “(Jovana) is really good. She’s great kid, and we’re really looking forward to having her, so you’ll have to come back and watch her play.”
Auriemma told Marjanovic he has yet to visit Serbia, and the ex-NBA center immediately extended the Huskies coach an invitation.
“Please visit Serbia and be my guest,” Marjanovic offered. “The whole setup, we’ve got you everything. And we’ll find you some players, some more.”
