WARSAW, Poland - Omar Prewitt had only been in basketball-crazy Lithuania for a few days, and his first time in Europe was wearing on his psyche.
 
"It's cold, it's snowy. I had to wake up 20 minutes early for practice just to scrape the snow off my car every day. I didn't know if I was going to make it. But then I settled in," he said of his first experience with pro basketball overseas. "I am from Kentucky so I am used to basketball culture; they are crazy about it."
 
But the former Tribe basketball standout did survive that first pro season, playing in 14 games in Lithuania during the 2017-18 campaign before moving to Greece, where he averaged 5.5 points per contest in 15 A1 league contests there.
 
Prewitt has built on that challenging first pro season.
 
He began this season with a team in Warsaw, the capital of Poland that was heavily bombed during World War II. Picking up a few words of Polish and learning about its checkered history is part of the territory for Prewitt, who has excelled on the court with a  season-high 36 points on January 12.
 
Prewitt, who graduated in 2017 with a degree in kinesiology, was averaging 17.5 points per contest though the opening 20 games for Legia and was named the player of the month for Poland's top league in November. For most of the season, he has been the only American on his team in a competitive world of pro hoops in Europe.
 
"The craziest thing about pro basketball here is no one is safe," said the 6-foot-7 Prewitt, 24, sitting in the lobby of a hotel in downtown Warsaw. "I have seen coaches moved like that. I have seen players moved just like that. If they are going to bring you all the way from America, you are going to be one of the highest paid players on the court and you are expected to score. That is the perception of us."
 
David Cohn is in his first season with a pro league in Israel with a team in Eilat, home to about 50,000 people.
 
"I am in the southern part of the country on the Red Sea," he said in a telephone interview in late January. 
 
"I'm five minutes from Jordan and 10 minutes from Egypt. It's amazing."
 
Terry Tarpey, who was born in France, is in his third season in the country. He led Le Mans to its fifth French National Basketball League Championship. Primarily a starter, he averaged nearly seven points and five rebounds in 2018.
 
"The town where I play, Le Mans, would compare well with a small city in the states," according to Tarpey. "There's 250,000 people in the area, with probably about 150,000 downtown and the other 100,000 in the suburbs. There is a famous cathedral in my town and I often walk by it on my way to my favorite crepery for lunch. It's called Saint Julien's Cathedral and is massive, beautiful, and still a functioning church."
 
HOOPS BEYOND THE CAA TOURNAMENT
 
With the CAA tournament drawing near in South Carolina, the achievements of Prewitt, Cohn and others show that a basketball career doesn't have to end once their last game with the Tribe is in the record books.
 
Prewitt is one of several former Tribe hoopsters who has played basketball overseas this winter.
 
Former William & Mary women's standout and Virginia Beach native Jazmen Boone, who ended her college career in 2015, played in Australia last year after two seasons in Ireland. Emily Correal, after stops in Italy, Switzerland and Sweden, was signed by a team in January in Belgium. Kaitlyn Mathieu played in a few games in Bulgaria last fall after earlier gigs in Germany, Denmark, Macedonia and Luxembourg. After graduating last year, Abby Rendle played in Belgium this year.
 
Other products of coach Tony Shaver's program overseas this season include former CAA Player of the Year Marcus Thornton, who was in Turkey before suffering an injury; Oliver Tot (Slovakia), Laimis Kisielius in his native Lithuania; Thomas Papas (Greece), Cohn (Israel), Tarpey (France), Daniel Dixon, who played in France before joining the Northern Arizona Suns of the G-League, and Connor Burchfield who is also in the G-League with the Greensboro Swarm.
 
Dixon played in the summer league with the Boston Celtics in 2018 before heading to Europe. Burchfield was a first-round pick in the G-League Draft in 2018 by the Austin Spurs before spending time with the Sioux Falls SkyForce and the Swarm.
 
Thornton was drafted in the second round by the Boston Celtics in 2015 out of college and previously played in Australia, Italy and China. Tot was born in Hungary and grew up in Slovakia and averaged nearly nine points per contest in his first 22 games this season. In total, Kisielius has played 11 seasons in Europe with stops in Ukraine, Latvia, Germany and Belarus along with playing in Lithuania.
 
Tarpey was the two-time CAA Defensive Player of the Year during his W&M career and recorded the first triple-double in program history. He now has the opportunity to play professionally for the same organization his farther did after a standout career at NYU.
 
"Before starting my journey to play professional basketball I lived overseas for 3 years, the first 3 years of my life, in the very town that I'm in now. My father played professional basketball in France for 10 years, and I was born the year before he changed teams to Le Mans, where he finished his career. I don't remember much, and the language certainly didn't stick around after we moved back to New York in 1997," Tarpey noted.
 
Cohn's father has Jewish heritage and that aided his decision to play pro ball in Israel. He does not count against the limit of North Americans on the team.
 
"I have always wanted to play professional basketball, it had been a dream of mine," according to Cohn. "Most decisions I made growing up revolved around the idea of which would set me up to achieve that dream the best. From last March 'til now, I signed with my agents at Beyond Athlete Management, worked tirelessly all summer in the gym and signed my deal for Israel while I was with the Philadelphia 76ers summer league training camp. I had been outside of the U.S. a few times, but never to Israel. At first it was different than any place I had been but it's grown on me tremendously."
 
Cohn graduated from W&M as the program's all-time leader in assists, playing just three seasons in Williamsburg. He capped his career earning All-CAA honors as a senior, before starting his professional career with the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers over the summer.
 
"As a rookie the biggest adjustments for me on the court has to be the physicality of the league," Cohn added. "First off you're playing 30 year old and plus men and 17 different guys who have NBA experience in the league. The way the game is refereed is also completely different. As a point guard also the way you operate in pick and roll situations is also different. But with every week that goes by I feel like it's becoming easier to understand how to play here. Off the court, I spend a lot of time alone which gets lonely. Thank God for Apple and their FaceTime so I can 'see' family and friends regularly. I have a lot of free time as well, so learning how to adequately spend that time has taken some time."
 
TRIBE PROGRAM HELPED PAVE THE WAY
 
Prewitt was part of a Tribe program that advanced to the CAA title game twice in his career. He averaged 15.6 points and 6.2 rebounds per game as a senior for William & Mary during the 2016-17 season and was a second-team All-CAA player.
 
The top Polish league requires six Polish players on each team and two have to be on the court at all times. Like most Americans playing in Europe he is provided the free use of a car and apartment and has very few expenses.
 
"Our Polish guys are very good. They contribute to our team very well," Prewitt said. "Our coaches are from Macdeonia and one of them is Polish. All of them speak very good English. All of the players speak English; you almost have to if you want to play since Americans are going to be the focal point of most teams. The language barrier is very easy within the team."
 
Cohn was teammates with Prewitt and graduated last year with degrees in history and kinesiology.
 
"I owe so much to William and Mary and all the people that make it such a special place," wrote Cohn. "The rigorous class work taught me many lessons especially time management. More importantly, it taught me you get out what you put in. The faculty at WM is second to none in my opinion. The basketball program helped me demonstrate my abilities to the highest level, and helped me prepare mentally for the grind of being a professional basketball player. I truly cannot say enough positive things about both academics and athletics at W&M and how much it already has and will continue to help me excel moving forward in my professional career."
 
Prewitt has been around basketball since he was a young boy. His mother, Lea, played at the University of Kentucky and coached both of his sisters at Centre College in Kentucky.
 
So how long would Prewitt like to play overseas? "I told myself coming out of college I would have a three-year plan," he said. "If I am making a certain amount after my third year I would like to keep playing. I want to have a family when I am grown up, too. I know I have opportunities back home. This summer I will get my real estate license; that is what my dad does. It is a great backup."
 
For now he is enjoying his second season overseas.
 
Prewitt was the only American on his team in late January, and he had teammates from London, Russia, Belarus as well as Poland. "It is cool to get to know those guys and their experiences growing up and how they were different from mine," he said.
 
Editor's note: David Driver is a Virginia native who has covered Colonial Athletic Association basketball since the 1980s, and has covered several Tribe games in various sports. He also lived three years with his family in Hungary and has interviewed American basketball players over the past 15 years in Russia, England, France, Serbia, Belgium, Portugal, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Austria, the Czech Republic and Hungary. He has contributed to major USA daily newspapers on the topic, including the Richmond Times-Dispatch and Raleigh News-Observer, as well as dozens of university websites and alumni magazines. Driver can be reached at davidsdriver.com