It took three different Facetime audio calls to complete the interview due to a poor internet connection. But former Boise State basketball star Derrick Marks didn’t mind. He has little else to do.

Marks was hunkered down inside his home in Torin, Italy, due to a lockdown imposed by the continued spread of COVID-19.

“You know what? I’ll sit here and talk with you all day,” Marks told the Idaho Press. “I love talking to people from Boise.”

Marks, the 2015 Mountain West Player of the Year, is playing basketball professionally in Italy. But his season was recently suspended due to the coronavirus, and he’s remained inside for much of the past two weeks due to most of the country being on lockdown.

As of Monday, Italy had more than 63,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and had the most deaths of any country at 6,078.

“It’s starting to get crazy,” Marks said. “Everything is on lockdown, but you can still go to the grocery store or the bank. You’re only allowed to have access to necessities. The government doesn’t want you out to just be out.

“I literally haven’t shot a basketball for like two weeks. I went to go run outside, but that’s about it. We have to stay inside, so the last thing I should be doing is going outside to play basketball, and our gym is government owned so obviously they closed that.”

At the time of the interview on Saturday, Marks was hoping to leave Italy and return to the United States in the next day or two. He’s since confirmed to the Idaho Press that he is back in Washington, D.C.

“It was just important to get back home before they possibly close the borders,” said Marks, who is from Chicago.

Marks ranks No. 3 all-time in scoring at Boise State with 1,912 points. He led the Mountain West with 19.4 points per game as a senior while leading the Broncos to their first regular season Mountain West title in league history.

The Broncos earned an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament that year and played Dayton in a First Four game in Dayton. Marks appeared to be fouled on a shot as time expired, but no call was made and the Broncos suffered a heartbreaking 56-55 loss.

After flirting with the NBA, he instead elected to play overseas, where he’s enjoyed a successful five-year professional career.

Marks said it’s unlikely his season will resume in Italy, which is why he made the decision to get back on U.S. soil as the coronavirus continues to get worse worldwide.

“We have about two weeks until we find out if the season is going to continue, so if they decide to finish the season I’ll buy a flight and head back out (there),” Marks said. “It’s disappointing because I played on a team that was one of the favorites to win the league. We were in first place at the time they decided to postpone everything. It felt like a championship team, so to see it all go to crumbs if they decide to cancel it would be tough.”

Marks lived in Turin, a town in northern Italy about 90 minutes west of Milan and an hour east of the France border. Northern Italy has seen the worst of the coronavirus outbreak in the country.

Asked how many people were still out and what it was like on the streets in Turin, Marks said, “To be honest I’ve been inside myself so I haven’t really seen too many people.”

Marks said he didn’t have a reason to panic during the pandemic because the professional team he played for was making sure he had what he needed to remain safe.

“At first some people thought others were just overreacting, but it was soon obvious that this is serious,” Marks said.

How did Marks pass the time while being inside for much the past two weeks? Homework. Marks is taking his final online class at Boise State and will graduate in May with a degree in Multidisciplinary Studies.

One benefit of leaving Italy and returning home? His mom won’t have to worry anymore.

“You know, you have your mom being a mom,” Marks joked. “But they know I’m OK and that I’d make the right decisions.”

The first of which was returning home. Marks said he planned to split his time between where his trainer lives in Washington, D.C. and his hometown of Chicago, depending on what is allowed.