For Mate Milisa, Life Has been...

Basketball practice is supposed to end with a whistle, not an explosion. But one night in 1991, that’s exactly what happened for the Cibona club in Zagreb, Croatia.

Practicing in its gym, as it did every night, the team heard explosions and shooting outside. The players and coaches went out and saw a sky lit up by missile blasts.

“War was starting right now,” Mate Milisa, one of the players, recalled. “I was in practice when war broke out in my hometown.”

That war lasted until 1995, forcing Milisa to spend most of his teenage years with a battlefield only 20 miles from his home.

“War made me grow up really fast,” Milisa said. “It made me see there is something beyond our childhood and the playgrounds and basketball.

“I had to become a man when I was 15 or 16.”

Now 24, Milisa is the man in the Big West Conference. At 6 feet 11, he’s the starting center and leader of a Long Beach State team that has won 21 games--15 in a row at one point--and clinched first place in the Western Division.

He’s averaging 18.4 points and 6.9 rebounds a game, and is shooting a conference-leading 59.8%.

“There’s no doubt in my mind he’s the best player in our conference,” 49er Coach Wayne Morgan said. “If he had the athleticism of a [Keith] Van Horn he’d be a top-five [NBA] pick.”

Milisa’s road to success has been long and complicated. Besides surviving the war in his homeland, he has been at three schools in three parts of the country in four years. Now he is three months from earning a degree in a country whose language he could hardly speak when he arrived.

Milisa started playing basketball when he was 10, going one on one with his brother, Zoran. Seven years younger, Mate struggled for years to defeat Zoran.

But against other kids his age, it was a different story. Almost immediately, Milisa excelled, joining a club and becoming the best player in his age group.

When Serbians invaded Croatia in 1991, Milisa was 15, not yet old enough to be drafted. And once he was old enough, he was in school and exempt from the draft.

For more than four years, Croatia was ravaged by war and violence but despite the closeness of the fighting to the family home, the Milisa family was a lucky one.

“I am very fortunate that I did not lose anybody--any of the members of my family or any friends,” Milisa said.

While he was playing in the junior world championships in Greece when he was 18, Milisa was noticed by scouts from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va.

Shortly afterward, he was offered a scholarship.

“I was at the crossroads,” Milisa said. “I had to decide if I wanted to start playing professionally back home for a low amount of money or if I wanted to do something else with my life.

“I wanted to play basketball at the highest level I can but I still wanted to finish school to give me a life after basketball.”

So, in the fall of 1996, the 20-year-old Milisa was a student at James Madison. There was no war to worry about but, even so, Milisa struggled through a frustrating year.

First, there was the language problem. Milisa had been learning English since the seventh grade, and had even traveled to the States twice with his junior national team. But he was not ready for conversation in the one of this country’s oldest states.

“I thought I knew English,” Milisa laughed. “But when I came to the U.S., then I figured out how much I didn’t know. The first 2 1/2 or three months were really hard for me.”

And things weren’t any easier on the court. A lower leg injury forced him to miss nearly two months of activity, although it was during that period that he found his link to Long Beach. Then in the championship game of the Colonial Athletic Conference tournament, James Madison lost to Old Dominion, 62-58, on a disputed foul call in overtime. And finally, the James Madison coaching staff was subsequently fired.

Milisa’s dream was evaporating, so he decided to leave James Madison. Unable to get a release from his scholarship and unwilling to sit out a year to transfer to another Division I school, Milisa transferred to Pensacola Junior College in Florida.

But before going there, Milisa returned to Croatia for the summer.

There, he met Ivana Malenica, a senior at a university in Croatia. They hit it off, and when he returned to the United States, they maintained a long-distance relationship.

“When we survived that first year, I knew that she’s probably the woman of my life,” he said.

With love in his life and playing for Coach Paul Swanson, whom Milisa considers the best coach he has had, Milisa had the best season of his life at Pensacola.

He was an all-state player, averaging 18 points, nine rebounds and four assists a game. He led his team to the state championship game. And, overcoming all the struggles he’d had with English in Virginia, he was an academic All-American.

By then, Milisa knew about Long Beach, and Long Beach knew about him.

While Milisa was nearly immobilized with his leg injury at James Madison, he began exploring the Internet, looking for Croatians with athletic interests.

He eventually made contact with Anja Grabovac, then a freshman on the Long Beach State women’s volleyball team who also wasn’t playing because of a knee injury.

They kept in touch, and eventually met in person in Croatia, where the friendship was cemented.

So when Morgan, in his second season at Long Beach, was looking for a center, he learned of Grabovac’s friend in Pensacola and decided to give him a look.

“I remember when I came back [from the Pensacola trip] and I met with my staff, I said, ‘I just saw the answer to our problems,’ ” Morgan said.

And getting Milisa to Southern California certainly was no problem.

“He said, ‘I want to go to school in California, I want to be near the water and I want to be near my friend.’ I said, ‘Hell, that’s us,’ ” Morgan laughed.

So, once again Milisa was on the move.

“It’s been hard, moving every year and having to get used to a completely new lifestyle,” Milisa said. “The hardest thing is trying to get my life going, especially the first three or four months.”

Long Beach was no exception.

“I think he went through some rough times last year, missing his family,” Morgan said.

One thing that made the transition easier this time was Malenica, who joined him here.

With his girlfriend at his side and in what he considered the perfect situation, Milisa became one of the Big West’s best players last season, making second team all-conference. He led the 49ers in rebounds, steals, shooting percentage and free-throw percentage.

He also tied forward Grant Stone for the team’s best grade-point average.

“Mate is unbelievably tough, unbelievably focused and dedicated,” said Morgan, who, in 12 years as an assistant at Syracuse, has seen plenty of NBA-caliber players. “I’ve coached a lot of great players and in terms of enduring any type of pain or hardship, he’s one of the toughest players I’ve ever been associated with.” But Morgan knew Milisa could be better and Milisa wasn’t satisfied with his junior season. So this off-season, he focused on becoming a more complete player.

The result?

“He can shoot and pass and dribble and his basketball aptitude is just incredible,” Morgan said.

Forward Antrone Lee said: “He can post you, he can step out and then he can take his man on the dribble. He’s gotten stronger and he’s gotten quicker, and that’s tough for [an opposing] big man to stop.”

Milisa is the team’s top shooter from both inside and outside the three-point line. His 57 assists are second to Lee’s 58. And he plays 2 1/2 more minutes a game than any other 49er.

But where Milisa has improved most has been most in leadership. His English is fine now, and his teammates hear him loud and clear.

“They know if Mate does something it must be right,” Morgan said.

And the ultimate goal, making the NCAA tournament, is within reach for Milisa and the 49ers.

The United States has opened a whole new life for Milisa. The only bombs he sees now are the ones that are worth three points.

But as a Croatian, Milisa is still required to serve 10 months in his country’s army, once school is over, unless he is playing professionally. The goal for Milisa is the NBA, overseas if that doesn’t work out.

The possibility of army service doesn’t worry Milisa, who plans to move back to Croatia eventually.

“I am a Croatian, definitely,” he said. “There’s no way I’m going to be something else. Home is home.”

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