"Basketball for me was some kind of an escape from the reality. Don't listen to the news, don't read the news, don't worry about something bad happening. It was some kind of protection for me."

Loyola University Maryland assistant men's basketball coach Ivo Simović was a teenager in Serbia during the mid-1990s, and he used basketball as a method to distance himself from the civil wars that engulfed the region at the time. 

Watch and listen to Coach's Corner presented by The Woodberry Apartments as Simović chronicles his journey from a player in Serbia to a coach in his native country with top European club KK Crvena zvezda. He then became a head coach and general manager in Spain with CB Espacio Torrelodones before joining the San Antonio Spurs organization. That opportunity with the NBA would lead to him becoming a NCAA Division I assistant coach.

Simović is in his third year at Loyola where he has assisted Head Coach Tavaras Hardy in helping the Greyhounds rise in the Patriot League while also bringing in multiple players from across the Atlantic.