Aleksa Ristic started playing basketball at 10 years old, and began competing against professionals just six years later.
Ristic, like many kids in Serbia, played soccer early on. But his dad helped him get into basketball and eventually start training with his neighbor in Niš, and the game grew quickly on him. He competed in junior leagues in Belgrade, and worked his way up to the Basketball League of Serbia at age 16.
He still remembers what that first game against the pros felt like; it was intimidating.
“It was pretty hard,” Ristic told The Daily Hoosier in a phone interview. “I was really weak, really thin. I ran around the court trying to catch all of them.”
The guard improved with time. Ristic was thrust into a professional lifestyle as a teenager, and has applied a businesslike attitude to the game from that young age. He grew to 6-foot-4, found success at the club and national team levels, and is joining Indiana men’s basketball in the fall.
Balkan basketball background
Ristic, 19, played with KK Dynamic in Serbia this past year. He averaged 13.9 points, 3.2 rebounds, 4.2 assists, and 1.2 steals per game, while shooting 38.6 percent from 3-point range. The more he’s played at the professional level, the easier the game has become.
He’s played against some high-level teams, like Red Star. Those were eye-opening experiences.
“You had to learn something from all of those games,” Ristic said. “You see the way people think, the attention to details they have, their bodies that they have and how they use them. So even on those games, if I was terrible, I still took something from them.”
His improvement and potential has been on full display this month at the FIBA U20 European Championship, where he’s helped Serbia make a deep run in the tournament. Ristic recorded a double-double in the quarterfinals against Ukraine, and he scored 22 points in Serbia’s prior game against France.
Ristic previously won gold with Serbia in the 2023 FIBA U18 European Championship, clinching that top spot in his hometown — a moment he called his favorite on-court memory so far.
“We Serbs take pride in playing for our national team,” Ristic said. “Every chance we get to play, we answer the call. And then we all like to get together and just train hard and then fight for the medal (to) bring something out of it.”
Niš is the third-largest city in Serbia, with more than double the population of Bloomington. Yet Ristic still calls it a small town, the type of place where everyone knows everyone.
Home already carries a special importance for Ristic. Because of the way basketball forced him to mature quickly, home is more than just a place to be around friends and family and to feel the love and support that comes with that. It’s a place to exhale.
“My hometown is like rest,” Ristic said. “Belgrade is work. Hometown is rest.”
The big move
Ristic hasn’t always had his eyes set on playing college basketball in the United States. He’s had enough else to focus on in Serbia.
But after discussing his future with his family and agents, that decision became clear around early January.
“When I thought about it, you get everything over there. You get everything a basketball player wants,” Ristic said. “So one day, it just clicked, and then I made the decision to go to the States.”
When he set his sights on American college basketball, Ristic had never been to the country. Since then, he’s come to the U.S. twice, both for recruiting visits to Oregon and Georgia Tech. He enjoyed those visits, but didn’t feel completely certain those programs were the right fits for him.
Indiana entered the picture for Ristic in the spring. Within a few weeks, head coach Darian DeVries and assistant coach Kenny Johnson convinced him.
“They just talked me through what they see with me and how I fit in (the) squad, and what they want from me,” Ristic said. “I liked what I heard, so we kept on talking. I talked to my agents, and we all thought that Indiana was the best fit for me.”
Specifically, Ristic cited IU’s history and rabid fan base as something that appealed to him. Even though he hasn’t been to Bloomington, he’s excited about playing in an atmosphere like Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall regularly produces. The Serbian also liked the development plan DeVries and Johnson laid out. Ristic will be Indiana’s first international player since Hanner Mosquera-Perea in 2015.
Like all incoming freshmen, he knows he’ll need to get stronger and quicker to be able to compete at the collegiate level — “the big leagues over there,” as he dubbed it. But the experience Ristic has gained competing in Serbia, along with his player profile, will give the Hoosiers an intriguing piece.
“In Serbia, I’m a shooter, I’m a guy on the ball. I play 1 and 2, most — I play both positions,” Ristic said. “I would say my biggest strength is my shot and my pick-and-roll game. I would say I have a good basketball IQ, so I use it as much as I can.”
He wants to resume his professional career after playing in college, whether that’s in the NBA or back in Europe. In the short-term, Ristic just wants to help IU and improve his own game as much as possible.
“I would like to play as much as I can (this coming year),” Ristic said. “I would like to fit in the team as best as I can. But we will see what coach gives me. I’m going to work hard, I’m going to work on myself, get to know the team, build some chemistry with them, and just improve as time goes by. And then we’ll see.”
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