Pat Kelsey has Louisville basketball back on track. What will ACC play bring?
The manner in which Louisville basketball closed nonconference play Saturday — a tense, buzzer-beating win over an Eastern Kentucky team currently ranked No. 205 in the KenPom metrics — was perhaps the best indication yet that first-year head coach Pat Kelsey has the Cardinals back on the right track.
Sure, most of the holiday crowd of 13,150 fans inside the KFC Yum! Center would have preferred a more clear-cut performance by the Cardinals against the Colonels, and certainly one that didn’t require a last-second layup from sixth-year forward Noah Waterman to win the game for U of L.
But gutting out an uncomfortable win over what should have been an overmatched opponent actually served as a major indicator that Kelsey and the Cardinals are up for the fight this season, in stark contrast to Kenny Payne’s two disastrous seasons leading Louisville.
Kelsey’s team will enter the thick of ACC play with an 8-5 overall record, a mark that already matches the number of wins the Cardinals had last season. Louisville has split its two ACC games thus far, losing at home to Duke while winning at Florida State.
U of L was certainly tested during the first two months of the season as well. Per KenPom, the Cardinals’ strength of schedule ranks 20th in the nation.
This isn’t to say that Louisville has always looked good in these performances. Kelsey’s team has been on the wrong side of home defeats to Tennessee (by 22 points), Ole Miss (by 23) and Duke (by 11). It also remains to be seen how well U of L’s wins over Indiana and West Virginia in the Thanksgiving week Battle 4 Atlantis event in The Bahamas will age.
But with the focus now squarely on conference play, there are encouraging signs for how Louisville could perform against a weak ACC in the new year.
Let’s start with the fact the Cards already have a conference win to their name. One week after fighting Kentucky all the way in a reinvigorated edition of the rivalry between the two commonwealth schools, Louisville went on the road to Florida State and came away with a 14-point win.
For a team that had a pathetic 1-19 mark in ACC road games over the previous two seasons, that was a noteworthy accomplishment.
The performance of several key Louisville players in that win over Florida State also lays out the blueprint for why the Cardinals could find real success in an ACC that’s ranked by KenPom as only the fifth-best league in the country.
Senior guard Chucky Hepburn is playing at a borderline All-America level for the Cardinals. He had 16 points and eight assists against Florida State, and is averaging a team-best 15.2 points and 5.2 assists per game this season.
Fifth-year guard Terrence Edwards Jr. — a former standout at James Madison — shook off his slow scoring start in December. Across six games last month, Edwards averaged 18.8 points per contest and shot 40% from 3-point range. He had 19 points in that win over FSU and Edwards led the Cardinals with 20 points in Saturday’s close shave over EKU.
“It’s just being experienced and stuff, to know that you are going to have ups and downs,” Edwards said Saturday. “Just staying the course. My teammates always have been telling me moving forward that they believe in me when I was struggling and stuff like that. My coaches are doing the same. It just gave me confidence to stay positive and keep going and that’s what you guys are seeing.”
Louisville continues to be one of the nation’s leaders in 3-pointers attempted. Again per KenPom, the Cardinals are third in the country in 3-pointers attempted as a percentage of total field goals taken: A whopping 53.5% of Louisville’s shots come from behind the 3-point line. This ranks only below North Dakota State (54.8%) and North Florida (54%) nationally. Kentucky is at only 41.8%.
U of L will continue to bomb away from deep, so it helps that the Cardinals have made real gains in their effectiveness at making those shots. Across the last five games, Louisville has shot 33.7% from deep, a significant improvement from early-season shooting woes, even if the Cards’ season-long 3-point percentage is still a disappointing 29.9%.
Senior guard Reyne Smith is making his 3s at a 37.3% clip this season.
And the Cardinals’ 2-point shooting success has helped make up for this lack of production from behind the arc. Louisville is making 57.8% of its 2-point shots, which — like U of L’s offensive rebounding percentage of 35.3% — is a top-40 mark nationally.
Louisville basketball is getting healthier
Perhaps no team in the country has been as affected by injuries as Louisville this season.
Senior transfer forward Kasean Pryor (torn ACL) and junior guard Koren Johnson (shoulder) are both done for the season. Two other Louisville players — senior center Aly Khalifa (knee) and senior guard Kobe Rodgers (leg) — are redshirting this season.
In Saturday’s home win over Eastern Kentucky, U of L welcomed back senior forward Aboubacar Traore after he sustained a broken left arm in early November.
“It’s just going to take a little bit of time to get into a rhythm and stuff like that,” Kelsey said of Traore, who grabbed one rebound and picked up three fouls in five minutes during his return against Eastern Kentucky. “Just good to get him out there. Get a sweat. Feel it. It’s going to be a little bit of a process getting him back into the fold, but he’s going to be really good for us.”
Currently, two Louisville players are averaging more than 30 minutes played per game: Hepburn (32.8 minutes) and senior guard J’Vonne Hadley (31.3).
“We had to adjust some things that we do in terms of how we practice, whether it’s duration, whether it’s the rigor of the practice, and things like that,” Kelsey said of Louisville’s season so far given its depth issues. “I love where we’re at and I love what we’re doing. We’ve had some really good moments so far in this first, however many months, of the season. We’ve had some tough games and some adversity, but our guys continue to fight.”
Cardinals will try to take advantage of weak ACC schedule
One of the defining features through two months of this college basketball season has been the ACC consistently underperforming.
The 18-team league has just one school — No. 4 Duke — included in this week’s AP Top 25 poll, which is yet again littered with SEC squads.
Only four ACC teams — Duke (2), Pittsburgh (23), North Carolina (29) and Clemson (30) — are included among the top 40 schools in the KenPom rankings. Currently, ESPN projects five schools from the ACC to make the NCAA Tournament, with Louisville listed as one of the first eight teams out of the tournament field.
The Cardinals last made the NCAA Tournament in 2019.
The ACC’s mediocrity will allow for U of L to be competitive in league play. Louisville last finished with a winning record against ACC teams during the 2020-21 season.
“I see us actually doing well,” Edwards said when asked about how Louisville measures up in the ACC. “... I think we can come out in a good spot in the ACC and be playing in March.”
“We’re not afraid of anybody,” added Hadley. “In our eyes, we see the ACC as open. ... We’re going to go into every game with that same mentality that we’re trying to win. We’re here for a championship and we’re not going to try to settle for less at all.”
A weakened ACC also means opportunities for resume-boosting wins will be few and far between for Kelsey’s team in the coming months. Of the 18 games left in the regular season for Louisville, all of which are against ACC teams, only five will come against teams currently projected by ESPN to make it into March Madness.
This run begins Wednesday night in the Derby City against North Carolina (8-5 overall, 1-0 in the ACC).
“It’s been a tough nonconference schedule, we knew that going in,” Kelsey said. “You go back and say, ‘I wish we could have that play back. I wish we could do this. I wish we could have changed something.’ But it is what it is. We got our butts kicked a couple times. We played some really, really good teams, beat them. Had our ups and downs, but like I said before, I like where our team is at right now.”
Wednesday
North Carolina at Louisville
When: 6 p.m.
TV: ACC Network
Records: North Carolina 8-5 (1-0 ACC), Louisville 8-5 (1-1)
Series: North Carolina leads 20-7
Last meeting: North Carolina defeated Louisville 86-70 on Jan. 17, 2024, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
This story was originally published December 31, 2024 at 6:40 AM.
