Andrija Jelavic will enter the transfer portal after one season at Kentucky
The final roster addition for Kentucky’s 2025-26 season will look at other options for his second year of college basketball.
Andrija Jelavic is entering his name in the NCAA transfer portal after just one season playing for coach Mark Pope, who brought the 6-foot-11 forward on as an international addition late in last year’s recruiting cycle. Jelavic entered the portal Tuesday, the first day of the two-week window that will close on April 21.
It’s possible that he could still return to Kentucky for a second season after exploring his transfer options, but he will be listening to offers and weighing interest from other major programs in the meantime.
Jelavic, who is from Croatia, was playing for a professional team in Serbia at the time of his commitment to the Cats, and the academic calendar in Europe resulted in his late arrival on UK’s campus. He missed all of Kentucky’s eight-week summer practice session due to the delay, which put him behind when preseason practices began in the fall.
While Jelavic began the season in a reserve role — and didn’t play at all in wins over Indiana and St. John’s or UK’s first two SEC games — he broke into the starting lineup early in the conference schedule and stayed there for the duration of the season.
He averaged 5.5 points and 4.0 rebounds in 15.6 minutes per game in 32 appearances for the Cats, who lost to Iowa State in the second round of the NCAA Tournament last month.
After that defeat, Jelavic said that everyone on the team “was really supportive” despite having to battle through individual and collective adversity over the course of a season that fell short of expectations and ended with a 22-14 record.
“Of course, the result is not what we wanted,” he said. “So I would say the greatest gift from this season is that fight through the adversity. For me personally, I never had a season like this when it was literally ups and downs all the time, just for me, individually, as well as the team.
“I mean, there were some times I played solid minutes, then there was one month that I didn’t play at all, then the next month I was a starter. So I definitely had to fight through some adversity, play under some pressure. And I’m just grateful for that. That’s a great experience for someone who’s (in the) first year of college basketball.”
Jelavic, who turns 22 years old next month, will have two seasons of college eligibility remaining after the NCAA ruled that he would start his career at UK as a sophomore due to his professional experience overseas.
Like all players who enter the transfer portal in good academic standing during the April 7-21 window, he will be able to play immediately at his next college stop.
Jelavic was viewed as a potential NBA draft prospect earlier in his European career and should have plenty of suitors at the high-major level this spring. He told the Herald-Leader in February that Pope was the first college head coach he spoke with directly during his brief college recruitment, which ended with a commitment during that initial phone conversation.
Pope also mentioned Jelavic as a priority in roster retention after the NCAA Tournament loss to Iowa State, grouping him with fellow underclassman starters Collin Chandler and Malachi Moreno during his postgame press conference in St. Louis.
“Retention is a big part of this, and we have good young players,” Pope said that day. “You think about you’re starting a first-year center and a first-year power forward and a sophomore 2 guard. It wasn’t the plan coming into the season, but it’s what we ended up with, and those guys have gained some great experience, and they’re going to get better and better and better. We’ll start there and kind of build out from there.”
Moreno announced Monday night that he will enter the NBA draft, noting that he will return to UK (and not test the transfer portal) if he withdraws from the draft before the May 27 deadline.
Kentucky has already lost Mouhamed Dioubate, Brandon Garrison, Jasper Johnson and Jaland Lowe to the transfer portal this spring. The Cats will also lose departing seniors Otega Oweh and Denzel Aberdeen — the two leading scorers on this past season’s team — with projected NBA draft pick Jayden Quaintance also expected to depart after playing just four games for the Cats.
Aberdeen, who will apply for a fifth season of NCAA eligibility, also entered his name in the transfer portal Tuesday morning.
