Forget opposing teams trying to scrape together a scouting report. It was tough enough for Hawaii coach Benjy Taylor.

Calling either Stefan Jovanovic or Stefan Jankovic for attention on the court was an exercise in frustration.

Thus, "Stef" and "Janks" for the respective 6-foot-11 big men with nearly identical names. They now rarely go by anything else around the team.

"I started doing that last year because I couldn’t keep them (apart)," said Taylor, who was associate head coach when Jankovic arrived as a midseason transfer from Missouri. "It just kind of caught on because I couldn’t call both of them Stef. And since the other Stef (Jovanovic) was here first, he got first dibs on it. So I had to come up with a nickname for Janks."

The two Stefans had fun with it … for a while.

"Sometimes, at the beginning we were telling girls we’re twins," Jovanovic said. "But it kind of becomes boring."

Lately it’s just business. Now that Jankovic cleared his two redshirt semesters and has taken the floor, UH has increasingly run its own version of a "twin towers" alignment with Jovanovic (pronounced "YO-va-no-veech") at center and Jankovic ("Yawn-ko-veech") at power forward. The two got the start at UC Riverside over the weekend with regular starters Garrett Nevels and Negus Webster-Chan out.

UH (13-6, 1-2 Big West) didn’t come out with the victory, but Taylor is not opposed to going to the look again, even with Nevels and Webster-Chan likely to return to action Thursday against league leader UC Davis (14-3, 4-0).

Jankovic has the skills of a guard in a big man’s body — he’s a lethal perimeter shooter in rhythm — while Jovanovic is more of a traditional back-to-the-basket player with an array of hook shots.

"Our games complement each other," Jankovic said. "He’s inside-out, I’m outside-in. We play well to each other’s strengths."

Jankovic didn’t shoot the ball particularly well (13-for-42, 30.9 percent) in his first six games since making his UH debut in the Hawaiian Airlines Diamond Head Classic. But he seems to have found his comfort zone and is coming off 15- and 17-point outings while shooting 12-for-18 (66.7 percent) in the past two.

Jovanovic has had some bright moments as a sophomore coming off some very light action as a true freshman. He had a double-double against Chaminade and scored 13 against Southern. He’s started three times and is actually the team leader in free-throw percentage (81.3).

"I certainly anticipate (Jankovic) will get better every game out and Stefan, he’s a hard-head kind of guy," Taylor said. "We just gotta make sure we get him in better positions where he can catch and finish. Where he doesn’t have to do too much work. That’s partly us, that’s partly him."

Both players are Serbian-born, though Jankovic moved to Canada with his family when he was 5 and lived near Toronto for 10 years until he departed for prep school in the States. Jovanovic was in Serbia for a longer period, then came to the States for high school. They first learned of each other when UH played Mizzou early in the 2013-14 season. Since Jankovic’s defection, the two have become good friends. They trained together in Serbia for 20 days over the summer, which strengthened their bond.

They regularly converse in Serbian on the court. On one play during Tuesday’s practice, the Stefans spoke in their native tongue and laughed.

"What’d you say?" point guard Roderick Bobbitt asked.

They just shrugged. In general, they say it’s nothing malicious.

"It just gives me that split of a second where I can tell him maybe to cut or something, which the other team won’t understand," Jovanovic said.

UH’s Serbian-roots contingent also includes American Niko Filipovich. Filipovich was Jovanovic’s teammate at Bishop Montgomery High in California. He also can speak Serbian, and gets in on the high jinks.

"I always have to be the translator, because both of them don’t even know English that well," Filipovich quipped.

The team jokes about Jovanovic’s stubbornness and Jankovic’s off-court confidence.

"They look like they could be related," Taylor said. "I don’t know if Janks would like me saying that because he thinks he’s very handsome," Taylor said. "He thinks he’s the Tom Brady of college basketball."

The coach still gets on them in practice — he’d like to see better toughness and rebounding.

After a tongue-lashing, Stef and Janks might mutter something in Serbian, then get back to guarding each other.

"He’s hard-headed, hard-working, a lot of potential though," Jankovic said of his counterpart.

Said Jovanovic: "He’s a really good friend outside of the court. … We help each other a lot and it’s been a really good experience for me in the long run and the short."