From Serbia to Mississippi to New York, Marija Avlijas is finding her place at Columbia

Avlijas hadn’t had stuffing before because she’s from Serbia — one of seven international players on Columbia’s 13-player roster. The Lions also have players from Australia, England, Estonia and Spain, but Avlijas arguably had the most circuitous route to Columbia as a transfer from the University of Mississippi.

Growing up in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, Aviljas started playing high-level basketball at a young age. She played for local clubs starting when she was 13 and for the Under-16 national team starting when she was 14. In 2021, she was named the MVP of the FIBA U16 European Challengers after averaging 25.2 points, 4.4 rebounds and 1.8 assists per game.

“It’s pretty obvious when you watch her play that she’s low turnover percentage. She understands, I think, bigger ideas and concepts,” Griffith told reporters on Thursday about her initial impressions of Avlijas. “I also really liked that she … could create a shot for herself and a teammate. I think she’s sneaky athletic and long, too, so she causes a lot of problems [defending] on the ball.”

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Columbia tried to recruit Avlijas after the Challengers, when she was 16, but she wasn’t interested in coming to the United States then. A year later, though, she changed her mind.

“In Europe, it’s really hard to finish school and play basketball at the same time,” Avlijas told The Next on Nov. 30. “So I decided to come to [the] U.S. [so] I can do both.”

She chose Mississippi partly because of the appeal of playing in the SEC, which was the nation’s third-best conference the season before she arrived. She also appreciated that Mississippi had an assistant coach from Serbia, Bojan Jankovic, though she hadn’t known him growing up.

The 5’10 Avlijas appeared in 17 of 33 games as a freshman, averaging 1.8 points, 0.6 rebounds and 0.6 assists in 8.4 minutes per game. She scored in double figures once, with 11 points in 27:37 against Michigan in November, but played very little in conference play.

There was also some culture shock living in Oxford, which is home to about 27,000 people compared with about 1.4 million in Belgrade. “It’s a cute little city,” Avlijas said. “… It’s a college town, so college football is really big there, tailgating, and everything is pretty close. It was fine, but I just like life in a bigger city.”

After her freshman season, she decided to transfer, for a mix of academic, basketball and lifestyle reasons. When Columbia — an Ivy League school that made the 2024 NCAA Tournament and is in New York City — reached out again, she jumped at the opportunity.

“It was a pretty easy choice,” Avlijas said. “I knew them from before, so we had that connection.”

“The second time around was great because we had a relationship with her,” Griffith told The Next on Nov. 16. “… When you have that trust built in [and] you know the family, it felt a little bit more like home.”

Avlijas has earned more playing time at Columbia than she did at Mississippi — in fact, she has already played twice as many total minutes as she did her entire freshman season. She has started five games, including each of the last three, and is averaging 5.2 points, 3.2 rebounds and 1.5 assists in 20.5 minutes per game.

Having other international players around has helped Avlijas adjust to her second new home in as many years. At Mississippi, there was only one other international player, and that player had moved to the U.S. as a young teenager, Avlijas said. In contrast, Columbia has so many internationals that it sometimes divides into “U.S.” and “World” teams for competitions in practice.

“It really means a lot having somebody that’s going through the same thing as you, being so far away from family,” Avlijas said.

Avlijas also sees similarities between European basketball and Columbia’s style of play, which is up tempo and uses a lot of screens. And she can lean on American senior guard Cecelia Collins, who transferred from Bucknell after her sophomore season, for advice on being a relatively rare transfer into the Ivy League.

“It must be so difficult to come across the world and play at an Ivy League school when this isn’t your home,” Collins said about her international teammates at Columbia’s preseason media day in October. “[The American players are] obviously used to it. We’re not too far from our home. So we’re just trying to make them feel as comfortable as possible.”

Nursing a minor injury, Avlijas started the season relatively slowly. She scored 5 points or fewer in each of her first six games and had five total assists against six turnovers.

“She’s going to be so good,” Griffith said on Nov. 16. “Wow, she’s special. She just needs to start to learn. She needs to learn how to play with this team. … She just needs time, just like every transfer.”

“Being a transfer’s so hard,” Columbia assistant coach Cy Lippold told The Next on Dec. 16. “… She came from a really tough situation being at [Mississippi] and not playing a ton, and even through the summer, kind of struggled not playing a ton with her national team. And really, coming back to our program was her first time getting back out on the court and playing basketball at a competitive level consistently.”

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Late in nonconference play, Avlijas seemed to start finding her rhythm. Against Wagner on Dec. 21, she scored in double figures for the first time at Columbia with 11 points, six rebounds and two assists. She then had 8 points, five rebounds and three assists against Towson on Dec. 29 and opened conference play with 11 points and three rebounds against Penn on Saturday.

“That girl is lethal,” guard/forward Perri Page told The Next after the Towson game. “… She’s relentless on the ball. She can get there. She’s very fast, she’s quick, athletic, she can jump. … She can really do anything. … She is going to be elite for us, definitely.”

The timing of Avlijas’ surge may not be a coincidence: During Columbia’s 13-day break from games for final exams, the Lions had more time to practice, and she could get in more individual work with the coaching staff. That was especially beneficial because the Ivy League doesn’t allow summer sessions, which are when that work often happens in other programs.

“Getting that one-on-one time with a transfer is just so valuable because we just haven’t had it,” Griffith told The Next after the Towson game.

During exams, Avlijas was named the program’s EDGE Player of the Week for the first time. The award goes to the player whose commitment to the Lions’ core values — energy, discipline, grit and excellence, or EDGE — shows up the most in the on-court numbers.

“That is huge growth for her,” Lippold said. “And being able to preach and now lean in so much more to our culture, that’s a big deal.”

Avlijas came to Columbia as a true point guard who scores well in the midrange, which is a skill the coaching staff was particularly excited about because of how it complements Columbia’s many 3-point shooters. This season, she is taking 46% of her shots in the midrange, compared with 35% for the team overall.

“That’s kind of a lost art in the States right now,” Lippold said about midrange scoring. “It’s like, people score at the rim and behind the three. … Marija allows us to kind of account for this one area of the court that we don’t really score in a ton, and it’s a little soft spot that a lot of defenses don’t defend well.”

While Avlijas isn’t the star of the show, she’s been extremely important in helping Columbia discover the best version of itself. Specifically, her skill set has allowed the Lions to play senior guard Kitty Henderson off the ball more and take advantage of the strides Henderson has made as a scorer.

“It’s versatile, and that’s what we want,” Henderson told The Next on Dec. 1. “That’s how we play.”

Columbia is also working to diversify Avlijas’ role, including letting her operate in the high post and playing her off the ball at times as well.

“She’s balancing being a scorer, a facilitator, running the point [and] … playing off ball,” Griffith said. “In our offense, we don’t have players just do one thing. And I think she’s always been a dominant ball player, and it’s really good to see her blossom into this playmaking guard.”

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Avlijas is settling in on the court, and she has completed her first Ivy League semester academically. She said she feels at home in New York, a city that reminds her of Belgrade with its energy and many restaurants. One of the few remaining challenges is the “double dinner” problem.

“People in United States have dinner really early, like at 5 or 6 o’clock,” she said. “So that was a really weird adjustment. In Europe, we have dinner at 9 or something, even 10 o’clock. So here, when I have dinner at 5 or 6, I’m hungry again at 10.”

On the court, though, that won’t be an issue. If Avlijas wants to have “double dinner” and carve up teams when Columbia plays back-to-back Ivy League games, the Lions will be happy to let her feast.