It can be easy to overlook Sead Dizdarevic.

The soft-spoken senior forward isn’t getting preseason hype like juniors Jeff Green and Roy Hibbert.

He doesn’t have a cool nickname like freshman Vernon “The Big Ticket” Macklin.

He doesn’t have a famous father like junior Patrick Ewing Jr. or Head Coach John Thompson III.

His best performance last season came against Fairfield, when he scored just two points and grabbed two rebounds in two minutes.

But don’t let all that fool you.

Anyone who was at Midnight Madness saw Dizdarevic go toe-to-toe with teammates juniors Tyler Crawford and Jonathan Wallace in the three-point contest, which is no small feat. Ask his coach about him and he will tell you exactly what he means to the team.

“Sead has been a very settling, very ground force with out guys,” Thompson says. “He may not get on the court as much as some of the other guys, but . what we’ve done on the court, a large part has been Sead’s efforts every day in practice.”

The 6-foot-9 forward, to be fair, does his part in keeping himself out of the public eye. He is quiet around the press, preferring to let his teammates speak for him. And when he does answer a question he is less affable than Green or Hibbert, who have gotten lots of practice talking to reporters in the last year as the Hoyas made their run to the Sweet 16. He thinks about what he is going to say before he says it, a restraint most athletes lack.

That is, unless you confuse him for a Serbian.

“Let me see that – Serbia?” he asks, nearly jumping out of his chair to look at the questions I have written down for our interview. One question includes the word Serbia.

“Don’t write that,” he warns me, showing emotion for the first time since I sat down. “My dad would kill me.”

A Montenegrin born and raised, Dizdarevic is fiercely patriotic. He goes out of his way to mention that he is from Montenegro, not Serbia. Serbia and Montenegro are historically two distinct countries, but both were part of Yugoslavia and then briefly one country after the dissolution of the federation, so few people know the difference.

Then in May, Montenegrins passed a referendum to seek full independence and in June Montenegro became a fully sovereign nation for the first time since 1918.

“Most people don’t know where [Montenegro] is, but I’m really proud to say I represent that country, my home,” he says.

It is a home that he doesn’t often get to see. He was supposed to visit his hometown of Bijelo Polje – a small mountain city near the border with Serbia – this summer, but his plans did not work out. He hasn’t been back to Montenegro nor has he recently seen his family, which has never been to the United States to see him play.

Dizdarevic is understanding. It is a long way from Montenegro to America. His father, Besim, who has lived his entire life in Bijelo Polje, owns a grocery store and restaurant there, and his mother Lidija stays at home, raising their youngest son Emir – not exactly a lifestyle that allows for jet-setting off to Washington, D.C., for a weekend basketball game.

Dizdarevic does, however, have a substitute family here in the United States. When he was 17, he came to the United States as an exchange student. Upon arriving in Sacramento, Calif., Dizdarevic moved in with Aaron and Rebecca Toto. Aaron Toto, the assistant boy’s basketball coach at Highlands High School, had experience with a foreign-exchange program from the Balkans, having previously welcomed two other foreign-exchange basketball players.

“That was a huge transition,” Dizdarevic says. “That was like day and night. It was completely different. I was very fortunate to be in a family in California, an American family, who received me really well, treated me like one of their own sons.”

Dizdarevic remains close with the Totos, who he says come out to D.C. or New York to see him play every year.

“I still keep in contact with them,” he says. “I’m still in great relations with them. It’s really good. I am really fortunate.”

While Dizdarevic may consider himself fortunate now, things did not always look so bright. He did have a normal childhood, growing up with two older sisters and a younger brother and playing soccer and volleyball because he was tall. But in 1991, when he was seven years old, things changed. War broke out across Yugoslavia as Croatia and Bosnia fought for independence. Much of the violence was far away, but life was still dangerous and uncertain, and Dizdarevic felt the effects.

“It affected us and it didn’t,” he says. “It didn’t because the war wasn’t in Montenegro, but we have family in Bosnia and in Serbia and it affected us because it affected them.”

Dizdarevic saw little of the actual violence and fighting, but his family, according to a 2003 article in the Sacramento Bee, opened its home to refugees, bringing family and strangers into their lives. That brought the war home and changed Dizdarevic’s childhood as well.

Dizdarevic prefers not to talk about the war, but when asked about when he got started playing basketball, he admits it was not until he was 13 because of the conflict.

Although Dizdarevic may have been behind the curve compared to American children who begin shooting hoops at five or six, he quickly caught up. Recruited by a local club team, Dizdarevic played for a few years with boys his own age, but quickly outgrew the competition and, by the time he would have been entering high school in the United States, he was playing professional basketball in Europe.

For about two years, Dizdarevic was a professional basketball player on a Montenegro-based squad that traveled throughout Europe. He lived on his own, traveling with the team and competing with men twice his own age. It was difficult, but it was what he loved to do.

Then he came to the United States and his whole life changed again.

“[Back home] it was a different way of living, going to school, everything,” he says. “In Montenegro it was basketball, then some other things, then school, but here it is just school, then basketball, then nothing else. It was professional from the high school level.”

Dizdarevic spent only one year playing basketball for North Highlands High School, but he made his time count. In his senior season he averaged 22 points, 14 rebounds, four assists and 1.5 blocks per game and led his team to their first northern California sectional finals in 20 years. Numerous Division I basketball programs noticed, including California, Pacific, Utah, Nevada, San Jose State and, of course, Georgetown.

“I didn’t know anything about college basketball when I came to the United Sates,” he says. “My coach in Sacramento – the one that I lived with – got a call from Coach [Craig] Esherick and first of all he told me it’s a great educational institution. It’s a great school and not only is it a great basketball program but I can do some other things than basketball, which I really like. And I always wanted to finish university – which I probably wouldn’t do if I were back home – and I came to visit here and I really liked the school. I met some teachers and I really liked the guys on the team, so really it wasn’t a hard choice.”

Deciding to come to Georgetown may not have been a difficult decision, but what to do when he has to leave is a whole other issue. Like most seniors, Dizdarevic does not like to answer the question of what he is doing after graduation. He says with conviction that he wants to continue to play basketball, but he is unsure where. He would like to stay in the United States, but it would be more difficult to play basketball here than in Montenegro or somewhere else in Europe.

A government major, Dizdarevic is also considering a career in politics if basketball does not work out. He interned with Rep. Peter Visclosky (D-Ind.) over the summer and says that his time on the Hill was a great experience.

“That’s really my passion, other than basketball, to see how different systems work in different countries,” he says of studying government.

But for now, Dizdarevic wants to put off the real world for a few more months and focus on his senior year and one last season in the Blue and Gray.

“I am really enjoying my senior year,” he says. “I hope it will all work out the way I wish.”