Pete Trgovich III, senior, is a student at IUN. He is taking graduate courses on the CPA exam in hopes of landing a career in financial services. He may be better known by IU Northwest students as the leader of the men's RedHawks basketball team. In 2009, he was selected as the Male Athlete of the Year. We sat down to chat about his accomplishments and what it's like to play for his father, a tremendously successful basketball player and coach.

Where'd you grow up?

I grew up in Munster.

Ever since I was little… I've been playing since a really young age.

My dad won a state championship as a player in East Chicago, although it wasn't East Chicago Central back then. Then he went to UCLA and won two national titles there. Then he came back in 2007 and won the state championship in high school as well, as a coach this time. He's one of the only coaches to do that, to win as a player and as a coach at the same town that he lived and played in.

Realistically, it puts a lot of pressure on me because I hear about how good he was, and everyone has expectations for me to be as good as he was. There aren't many people who are as good as he was. There's a lot of pressure, but it challenges me and makes me better. It makes me want to keep improving.

We don't have the camaraderie this year. Last year we played more as a team. Another thing people don't realize is that if you look at the best college basketball teams they're usually junior and senior oriented. This year we have numerous freshmen who have to play a lot of minutes as freshmen, and that's hard to do. That's why they say, the more experience you have, the better you'll be. Last year we had that experience. It's a whole other level going from the high school to the college game.

I would say it's a lot more physical and if you really think about it, if you look at each high school you'll notice that only one or two players go on to play in college. You're playing with the best of the best. So the guys you're playing against-all five starters-were like the stars of their high school team.

I shoot a lot. I actually have a machine called ‘the gun.' I have it at my house. It goes around the hoop and passes the ball to me. I get about 500 shots up in about 45 minutes.

Do you and your dad ever play one-on-one?

We played a lot a couple of years ago, not as much today.

I didn't fare too well. He was beating me consistently. I beat him a couple of times, but more likely than not, he was beating me.

My major is financial information systems.

I always liked math and my mom is an accountant, so I figured I could go into that. Technically, I could have graduated last year because I'm over on credit hours, but I wanted to take more classes to prepare for the CPA exam.

You know, I'm actually talking to four or five different people that know about European basketball, and I'm looking to play overseas.

I would like to go to Greece because I am Greek orthodox.

I like listening to music and watching TV. I really like rock and alternative rock music. Groups like Chevelle and Shinedown. In May I'm actually going to go see Nickelback with Breaking Benjamin, Sick Puppy, and Shinedown.

24!

They should keep improving as much as they can and keep being positive. We have a lot of young guys, and as time progresses they play more games and get more experience and hopefully they'll take it to the next level and eventually get to the national tournament.