Barta playing well, enjoying life in Montenegro

Professional basketball player Jill Barta is halfway around the world, but the other night she was feeling right at home.

The former Fairfield and Gonzaga superstar went 10-for-11 from the field and scored 26 points in 27 minutes of action as her Montenegro team called Buducnost, of the Women’s Adriatic Basketball Association, defeated Cinkarna Celje 86-74.

“That was a good game. They were a good team,” Barta said Thursday afternoon from the southeastern European city of Montenegro, which is located near the Adriatic Sea. “It kind of felt like playing with my old team again. Everyone was clicking with everyone.”

Barta, the 6-foot-3 forward who left a Big Sandy teaching job just before Christmas to give pro basketball a try, said it’s been an adjustment to be so far away from home. But her teammates have helped.

‘All the girls are getting along great,” she said. “You can’t make a team overnight, so that’s what we’ve been working on. Being patient and being leaders. Just getting along.”

Barta, 23, said she’s enjoying herself.

“It’s cool over here. A different part of the world,” she said. “Of course I miss Montana. I miss home, believe me. But this has been fun.”

The former four-time Tribune Super-State star from Fairfield had a tremendous  career at Gonzaga, where she was named all-conference three times and as a redshirt junior was the MVP of West Coast Conference. Following that 2017-18 season, having already graduated with a degree in Special Education, she opted to leave Gonzaga and start a teaching career.

Barta was drafted by the WNBA and had a brief tryout last summer with the Minnesota Lynx, then came back home to work with schoolchildren. Last Christmas she decided to try pro ball once again.

Soon she was off to Montenegro.

“When I first got here I was so scared,” she said. “I was like, ‘I don’t know the language and I’m all alone.’ But that hasn’t been (a problem) at all. Everyone has helped me.”

Serbian is not an easy dialect to learn.

“It’s so tough,” Barta laughed. “Sometimes my head just spins.”

But the language barrier can also be helpful at times on the basketball court.

“Like when the coach is yelling in Serbian and I just laugh because I have no idea what he’s saying,” she said with a chuckle. “Everybody laughs at me. But we’ve gotten along great over here. It’s a different style of play and different style of girls. But it’s something I will be able to take back with me.

“I definitely would have regretted not coming here.”

Up-tempo basketball is the norm over there, she said.

“I didn’t think it would take long to get used to, because I like to run and we played up and down at Gonzaga and really liked to get going,” Barta said. “But the pace over here is so much faster. You’re going 110 percent, everything you do is so quick. It’s fast, fast, fast. After not playing at all for four or five months it took me a good two weeks to get my mind right. I had to get back into the kind of shape I was in college, and I’ve been able to do that.”

Barta’s first professional game was in mid-January. Her team plays but once every few weeks so she’s been in a total of six games, averaging about 15 points per game.

And there have been several vintage Barta-like performances of late. The 26-point outburst was last week. On Feb. 21, the sweet-shooting Barta went 5-for-10 from the floor and 5-for-6 from the line en route to 17 points.

For the year, she’s shooting 38 percent from 3-point range and 54 percent overall from the floor.

Is she playing better than ever?

“Umm, I don’t know,” she said. “I feel like I’ve gotten smarter. You know, you’ve got to play smarter, not harder. Of course everyone always plays hard, but sometimes you’ve got to out-smart them.”

Barta has enjoyed the sightseeing as much as the basketball.

“We have so much free time,” she said. “We’ve being going to the sea and over to other countries exploring. We have two practices a day, one in the morning and one later at night. So we have all day to explore, go out and do things.”

One of Barta’s teammates, Laurita Jurciute of Lithuania, speaks English. The friendship has meant a lot to the former Fairfield prep star.

“We’ve become best friends,” Barta said. “She’s my right hand to communicate over here and it’s been great.”

The level of competition over there is not quite like the WNBA.

“It’s a totally different style of play over here,” Barta said. “It’s fun to compete against these girls. They’re not going to school; they’re playing basketball 24-7. It actually blows my mind to how dedicated these girls are to basketball. I mean, what they want from it and what they get. The girls are strictly all about basketball.”

The season will soon be over. What’s next for Barta?

“I’ll be home in about 10 days,” she said. “So I’ve got little bit of time to enjoy this long vacation that I’ve taken. I’ve got some good offers to go play basketball some more. I don’t know yet if I’m going to. I think I’m going to take the summer to see if that’s what I want to do.

“I love basketball. That’s my dream. But I don’t know if I’m ready to coach it yet or I want to keep playing.”

Barta’s agent is former Montana Lady Griz star Jeanne McNulty-King, the Whitehall native who lives now in Coeur d’Alene.

“She’s a good contact person for me,” Barta said. “When I’ve had a problem she fixes it. I thank God for not having many problems over here.”

Part of the reason for that, too, she said, is her fan base back home.

“They have been great supporters while I have been over here,” Barta said. “Believe me, I thought it might stop but I think I get more texts and calls from folks than I ever have before. And that’s after every game.

“Please thank the fans for me.”