G Mislav Brzoja Coming to Northwestern Maybe?

This is some, um, weird basketball recruiting whatnot: Mislav Brzoja, a Croatian guard who I had never heard of before yesterday, is committed to Northwestern, academic acceptance pending. This is for next year, by the way.

Brzoja doesn't know if he's accepted to NU yet, but if he is, he'll come, and if not, he'll go to Dayton. Just two weeks ago, he was visiting Kentucky, eating dinner with John Calipari and his American host family.

So let's summarize: a random Croatian basketball player just decided he will come to Northwestern next season if his grades are good enough but might go to Dayton but also Kentucky wanted him apparently.

Why Brzoja is being recruited now - just seven months before he'd hypothetically be playing college basketball - is sort of unclear. It's mid-May! Most high school seniors know where they're going to school by this point! And most basketball players know one or two years ahead of time! And this is a three-star recruit - who lives in Whitestown, Indiana - who apparently was just kinda chilling around not existing until mid-April, which is the earliest I see anything on him.

That said, it's nice that he's a Wildcat. If you're counting, that's him, Jared Swopshire, Nikola Cerina, Tre Demps, Michael Turner, Kale Abrahamson, Sanjay Lumpkin, and Alex Olah that will be suiting up at Northwestern for basically the first time next season. That's a lot of unknowns. As for Brzoja, he's a 6-foot-5 guard from Croatia who played at Traders Point Christian Academy this season, his first in America. Here's a 14-minute highlight reel of him in an empty European gym with handball nets behind each hoop, for those of you who like 14-minute highlight reels of people in empty European gyms with handball nets behind each hoop, which is actually the least weird thing about this. Nice get for Ivan Vujic, I guess.

Also, I thought we always had a rollercoaster-esque sign for Balkan ballers saying "YOU MUST BE THIS TALL TO PLAY BASKETBALL AT NORTHWESTERN" and the height was 6-foot-8.

First person to pronounce "Brzoja" gets six Sippin on PurplePoints. My guess is "Bur-zoja", but it would be cool if the J was pronounced like an H like in Spanish for "Bur-zoha!"