Pat Kelsey on being courted by a historic program in Louisville: 'God has a plan'

The Louisville Cardinals men’s basketball team is coming off a few lean seasons. Despite that, it’s still a historic program that new head coach Pat Kelsey is now trying to revitalize.

Kelsey spoke about the process of being courted and hired by Louisville while making an appearance on College Hoops Today with Jon Rothstein. There, he shared that he felt like God had a plan in bringing him to the historic program.

“I’ve been through job searches before in my 22 years at the Division I level,” Pat Kelsey said. “I give Josh Heird, our athletic director, a ton of credit. Just to how meticulous he was throughout the process with all the candidates that I know he was interested in having conversations with.”

Louisville fired Kenny Payne at the end of the season. In his two years running the program, the Cardinals went just 12-52 and finished last in the ACC twice. That’s when Josh Heird began the search for a new coach, eventually landing on Pat Kelsey on March 28th. He was given a five-year contract.

“Josh wasn’t caught up with how most searches are supposed to be done now. He literally went into this and he said publicly that he had nobody specifically in mind that he was going after from the start. He wanted to start from a base of zero and have conversations with a group of people that he has an interest in and see how it goes. He had a certain set of standards in place as to what he wanted in a head coach. Josh was extremely thorough. I had multiple conversations with him.”

Pat Kelsey has been a head coach in college basketball since 2012 when he took over the Winthrop program. Later, in 2022, he moved on to Charleston. That’s the job he held before leaving for Louisville. During that time as a head coach, Kelsey has gone 261-122. He also won sixth regular season conference championships and five conference tournaments to lead those teams to the NCAA Tournament.

Louisville is a program with a longer tradition of success in basketball than those other two schools, having gone to 10 Final Fours and won three national championships.

“Just the way it worked out, I’m a big believer that God has a plan,” Kelsey said.

“And I’m supposed to be sitting here with my feet on the ground in the 502, hopefully building a championship roster at one of the most tradition-rich programs in the country right now, and I’m very, very blessed to have done it.”