Pedro Bradshaw is coming home to play basketball. No, he hasn’t regained eligibility to play for the Russellville Panthers, the Eastern Kentucky University Maroons or the Bellarmine University Knights.
Pedro and his fellow Davis Steel team will be at Memorial Coliseum in Lexington for the championship finals of The Basketball Tournament. Their opponent will be La Familia, a team that is representing University of Kentucky Wildcat basketball alumni.
Bradshaw’s Davis Steel team edged The Mecca based in Long Beach, Calif., Thursday 71-69 in Las Vegas division of the tournament on a three-pointer by Terrell Brown. They had led by as many as 11 points in the first half when the starters like Pedro were doing most of the playing, but The Mecca made an impressive comeback to take a five-point lead, but Davis Steel came back for the impressive win for the Las Vegas Division.
UK’s La Familia had impressive wins over Kansas and Louisville to take the College Division titles. If the lineup is the same which played those three games against Louisville, most of the names will not be familiar. Those that were included Willie Cauley-Stein, Andrew Harrison, and DeAndre Liggons.
One of Bradshaw’s fellow starters on Davis Steel, the former Bowling Green High and Austin Peay State University star. In 2017 Pedro played his final game for Coach Phil Todd’s Panthers. That was in the regional championship game against BGJ. The Purples went on to win the school’s first state championship.
Bradshaw and Taylor were finalists for Mr. Basketball that year and have been good friends ever since. Both of them have played professional basketball ever since finishing college.
Pedro has been honored as the leading scorer and rebounder in Panther basketball history.
The championship game will be played at Memorial Coliseum on the UK campus. The winning team gets $2 million, twice as much as last year. All other teams receive no money from The Basketball Tournament.
The game will be aired Sunday on Fox television at noon Russellville time.