How Louisville coach Pat Kelsey’s energy is infectious
According to Louisville guard Ryan Conwell, Pat Kelsey’s energy is infectious throughout the program. He explains why.
The 2025-26 Louisville basketball season is shaping up to be the program’s most anticipated in recent memory.If the Cardinals are to meet these lofty expectations, Pat Kelsey’s team must embrace the dirty work on the defensive end.All eyes will be on freshman point guard Mikel Brown Jr., a projected lottery pick in the 2026 NBA Draft, and U of L’s centers.
Louisville basketball coach Pat Kelsey doesn’t like to stray far from what’s right in front of him.
The sky-high expectations surrounding the Cardinals entering the 2025-26 season, however, are impossible to ignore.
“It’s a little different,” Kelsey told reporters at ACC Tipoff. “(It’s) back to how it’s supposed to be at Louisville.”
“Pressure is like a privilege,” transfer guard Ryan Conwell added. “We don’t really see it as a burden; we see it as an opportunity to do something big and special.”
Make no mistake about it: Year 1 of the Kelsey era was special — a 19-win improvement from Kenny Payne‘s final season at the helm, a trip to the ACC Tournament championship game, a March Madness appearance for the first time since 2019. The program was revived. Now, it’s time to thrive.
“When we first got here, it was like, ‘Hey, get us some wins. Get us some wins,'” sixth-year guard J’Vonne Hadley said. “Now, you go to the grocery store, and guys are like, ‘Hey, J’Vonne, hang that banner up.'”
National pundits think it’s possible. ESPN’s Jeff Borzello, for example, has already predicted U of L will reach the Final Four in Indianapolis. Sure, Kelsey is 0-5 as a head coach in the NCAA Tournament; and only one of those losses was decided by single digits. But the 50-year-old Cincinnati native has never had a team this talented or deep.
If the Cards are to return to the promised land for the first time since cutting down the net in 2013, they must answer these three questions:
Roughly two months into the 2024-25 season, Kelsey noted “a movement” among his players on the defensive end. The numbers backed him up; from January on, Louisville boasted the country’s 14th-best adjusted defensive efficiency, per BartTorvik.com — one spot behind national champion Florida. In total, the Cards surrendered fewer points per 100 possessions than any other team Kelsey has coached across his 12 years in the profession.
This go-around, he’s making sure they come correct on that end from the jump.
“I want that to be our stinking identity, man,” Kelsey said. “The caliber of our team will be the caliber of defense that we become.
“We’ve got tough dudes; we’ve got really good positional size, good defensive instincts. … We’re going to be able to score the ball; I don’t think there’s any mistake about that. But we’ve got a team that can be a very, very good defensive team — and we better be, with the caliber of teams we’re playing.”
Kelsey had to replace the two players who spearheaded U of L’s defense last season — ACC Defensive Player of the Year Chucky Hepburn and fifth-year guard Terrence Edwards Jr. — but Hadley was adamant at ACC Tipoff that the 2025-26 roster is full of guys who can handle the toughest assignment on any given night, no matter the position.
“Defense is the key,” he said. “It’s going to take us wherever we want to go.”
“We’re always going to be a bow-your-neck, grit-your-teeth, tough, man-to-man team,” Kelsey added. “But we’ll add some variations that I don’t want to tell you about.”
We’ll find out quickly how far along Louisville is defensively. Year 2 of the Kelsey era begins with an Oct. 24 exhibition against Kansas at the KFC Yum! Center. The Jayhawks’ offense ranks 44th in Torvik’s preseason projections.
Kelsey has had ample opportunities to rein in the hype surrounding freshman point guard Mikel Brown Jr., the 29th McDonald’s All-American in program history and a projected lottery pick in the 2026 NBA Draft.
Instead, he has doubled down on his belief in the 6-foot-5 floor general from Orlando, Florida.
“Mikel is ridiculously talented,” Kelsey said. “It’s his humility, it’s his intangibles, it’s his commitment to the power of the unit and his teammates that make him really special. He’s the type of kid who loves basketball like he loves to breathe. You actually have to get him out of the gym. … That kid wants to be in there 24/7.”
To this point, Brown hasn’t been one to shy away from the big stage. Just look at his numbers from USA Basketball’s run to gold at the FIBA U19 World Cup this summer in Switzerland: 14.9 points on 46.7% shooting and 6.1 assists against 2.1 turnovers across roughly 23 minutes per game.
“It’s really no pressure,” Brown said when asked about his transition to the Division I ranks. “I trust my work, and I trust what I’ve been through and everything I’ve done to get to this point. … I’m just going out there and hooping and having fun.”
With Louisville’s bevy of veterans, Brown doesn’t have to be the guy nightly — and it would be foolish to assume he’s immune to freshman mistakes. But, if he takes full advantage of the freedom Kelsey’s system grants him and plays up to his potential, the Cards will be legitimate championship contenders.
“Everybody talks about Mikel’s hype and stuff like that,” Hadley said. “I don’t even know if I would call it hype; he’s earned that type of status. It’s our job to help him back that up this year.”
Louisville’s lack of depth at center was a weakness in 2024-25. James Scott was solid after Kasean Pryor went down with a torn anterior cruciate ligament only seven games in, but the Cards certainly could have used more bodies.
This season, U of L has a “three-headed monster at the 5” in Sananda Fru, Aly Khalifa and Vangelis Zougris, Kelsey said. Pryor is back, too, but might not be available during the early going as he reacclimates after nearly a year on the sidelines.
So the question is: How will Kelsey utilize three (and eventually four) centers with varying skill sets?
Fru, a 6-11 German, and Zougris, a 6-8 Greek, are new to DI but have spent the past four years playing professionally in their home countries. They are more traditional bigs — proven rebounders, shot-blockers and screeners who have impressed Kelsey with their versatility in pick-and-roll coverage.
Khalifa, a 7-foot Egyptian and a career 35.3% shooter from 3-point range, is coming off a redshirt year to recover from knee surgery. Kelsey considers him “one of the top-five passing bigs in the world.” As a junior playing for Mark Pope at BYU, he led the Big 12 (and all DI centers) with a 3.6 assist-turnover ratio. During his rehab, he cut his weight from 299 to 250 pounds with the help of strength coach Eli Foy. But he’s admittedly not the most athletic or the most physical of the bunch, which could pose problems defensively.
Who’s going to be the starter? How will minutes be divvied up? What happens when Pryor is cleared to enter the rotation? Fortunately for Kelsey, these are much better problems to have than shouldering one player with the lion’s share of the work.
Reach Louisville men’s basketball reporter Brooks Holton at bholton@gannett.com and follow him on X at @brooksHolton.