Pat Kelsey keeping a championship mindset entering first season at Louisville

Louisville hired Pat Kelsey to begin the 2024 offseason and tasked him with being the long-term solution to the slump the program has endured over the past two seasons.

Diving head-first into the NCAA transfer portal this offseason, Kelsey wants to make Louisville a destination for blue-chip college basketball recruits and transfers. After all, he’s got the track record to prove that he may be able to turn the Cardinals’ fortunes around under the right circumstances.

“Obviously, you don’t put your shoes on — as I say all the time — and lace them up, unless you’re anticipating competing for a championship,” Kelsey told Jon Rothstein on his podcast. “I’m never going to go into a season like ‘Hey, this season will be a success.’

“I’m just not that way. I’m just a big believer, and I’ve been this way for my entire career. We’ve won a ton of championships, like the last two years [at Charleston] we won the conference championship, win the conference tournament championship, went to the NCAA tournament, but it wasn’t like we went into the season and told the guys like, ‘Hey, if we do this, this is a successful season. If we don’t do that, it’s not. It’s just in the championship mentality every single day and how we recruit, how we coach, how we cultivate, how we build it. Obviously, that’s the goal of every single season.”

Kelsey comes into Louisville with 12 years of head coaching experience, leading Winthrop and Charleston to a combined 261-122 record and four NCAA Tournament appearances. That includes two consecutive trips to the Big Dance as the head man of the Cougars in 2023 and 2024. 

With 13 players departing from the team through the transfer portal and a slew of new additions, Louisville will look very different next season with numerous fresh faces.

Outside of high school four-star forward Khani Rooths, the remainder of Kelsey’s 2024 commitments come out of the transfer portal. With 12 players from different programs committing to the Cardinals, many of which boast experience in the most recent NCAA Tournament.

Three transfer additions join Louisville from Kelsey’s former coaching job at Charleston, with a pair also coming from BYU. Also headlined by experienced players like Aboubacar Traore, Terrence Edwards Jr., and Chucky Hepburn who have eclipsed 1,000 points in their careers. They will look to continue this success under Kelsey at Louisville during the 2024-25 season.