Photo: Streeter Lecka/ Getty

On the night of Feb. 14, an officer from the University of Maine campus police department paid a visit to the basketball team’s locker room after an ambulance was called in to pick up a player with a broken jaw. Senior guard Marko Pirovic was taken to the hospital, where he received surgery for two bilateral fractures in his jaw, according to police records. His jaw then had to be wired shut for six to eight weeks.




Initially, players told the officer that Pirovic had fallen in the shower. The team’s head coach said he wasn’t in the locker room when Piroic got hurt, and the lead trainer just diagnosed Pirovic’s symptoms, not their cause. However, the officer noted in his report from that night that Pirovic’s hair was dry.


The next day, the Black Bears left for a game in New Hampshire. Word then reached the police, via an assistant trainer, that junior guard Wes Myers had told head coach Bob Walsh that Pirovic hadn’t slipped in the shower. In fact, he and Pirovic had gotten into a fight and Myers punched him.

Basketball staff and players later told police that the fight started after Myers told Pirovic to turn off his music in the locker room. Pirovic refused, and Myers tried to forcibly turn it off. At that point, the police report said, the two players started fighting and Myers broke Pirovic’s jaw with one punch. The fight abruptly stopped when they realized that Pirovic was hurt and together Myers, Pirovic, and a few teammates cooked up the story that Pirovic had fallen in the shower to avoid getting in trouble. Pirovic didn’t want to press charges, and in a written statement given to police he said that both players were at fault for an argument that got out of hand, per the Bangor Daily News, who first reported on the fight last night.

In the aftermath of the fight, Myers, Pirovic, Jaquan McKennon, Dusan Majstorovic, and Ilija Stojilkovic were suspended. Everyone but Pirovic and Myers had their suspensions end after a week.