WATCH: Andrija Jelavic bids farewell to KK Mega Superbet ahead of journey to Kentucky

It’s move-in week for the Kentucky Basketball team, and one Wildcat has quite a journey ahead of him. Today, Croatian big man Andrija Jelavic bid farewell to KK Mega Superbet, the Serbian professional team he has been playing with for the past few years.

The squad held a send-off party for Jelavic and his four teammates who are also coming to the United States to play college basketball. Serbian forward Filip Jovic will play for Bruce Pearl at Auburn, forward Timotej Malovec is headed to Miami to play for Jai Lucas, guard Mihailo Petrovic is going to Illinois, and small forward Sergej Macura will be a Mississippi State Bulldog. Each player received a poster and was recognized in front of the group.

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Jelavic, who just turned 21, will soon join his new teammates in Lexington. This past season, the 6’11 stretch forward averaged 10.7 points, 7.4 rebounds, and 1.6 assists in 27.5 minutes per game for Mega Superbet, hitting 48.5% from the field. He made 25 threes over 29 games at a 30.5% clip. The team’s season ended on May 21 with a 77-73 loss to FMP Soccerbet in the Serbian SuperLeague quarterfinals.

Jelavic is still awaiting clearance from the NCAA, but according to Jack Pilgrim, the staff doesn’t expect any issues with the process, which started when he committed to Kentucky in mid-April.

“He’s been incredibly cooperative,” Mark Pope said of Jelavić at his offseason press conference last month. “The people at Mega and the people at his university have been incredibly cooperative. The NCAA is working hard and pushing it through as quickly as we can.”

A week later on KSR, Pope raved about Jelavic, talking about a recent FaceTime in which the big man got emotional talking about playing for a program like Kentucky.

“That was one of the really important parts of the process with Andrija [Jelavic], because I liked him, but you never know. Like, we’ll see how some of the skillset translates, some of the physicality translates, some of those things translate.

“But, as we were exploring all those things, which I was so excited about, all those pieces when I started talking about on the phone, and it was one particular conversation on FaceTime where I’m talking to him, and you could see him get emotional as he started talking about the possibility of playing at the University of Kentucky. And I’m like, that’s it. This is our guy, right? Because he’s not going to miss it.”

Now, it’s just a matter of time before the dream becomes a reality. Hopefully, he gets an exit row or aisle seat on his long journey to Lexington.