Pat Kelsey: 'No magic pixie dust' to perfect transfer portal usage

Louisville has won six straight games after winning at Pitt on Saturday, and the Cardinals are one of the hottest teams in the ACC. Louisville has relied heavily on transfer portal additions throughout the season, including Saturday as all five starters were transfers.

Head coach Pat Kelsey spoke after the win over the Panthers about how his club has come together to play well with so many new additions.

“It’s the right pieces, you know. It’s no magic pixie dust that we did,” Pat Kelsey said. “It’s, on the front end, making sure that you identify, find, recruit and sign players that are about the right things.

“That are about winning, that are about we, not me, that are about what we call the power of the unit. And they have that uncommon commitment to the guy next to you.”

It’s clear that Pat Kelsey is building a strong culture at Louisville, despite this being his first season there. The Cardinals struggled during a stretch earlier this year, dropping four of five games while dealing with injuries, but they have rebounded to have a strong year.

Kelsey feels great about the direction the Louisville program is headed, thanks in part to being able to bring in the right transfer portal additions.

“Our whole culture is based on the most powerful force in the universe, and that’s love, and that’s loving the guy next to you,” Kelsey said.

“People in Louisville here me talk about this all the time, but it’s just the caliber of human beings that we recruit. From Day 1, they meshed.”

Pat Kelsey believes ACC is ‘as good as any in the country’ this season

The out-of-conference numbers for the ACC haven’t been great in 2024-25, but Louisville coach Pat Kelsey believes the conference is much better than it gets credit for.

It was after Louisville’s close win over Pitt on Saturday when Kelsey was asked about the ACC this season. For him, the way Pitt played in the game goes to show just how good the entire conference is, even if his focus tends to be one game at a time.

“I think our league is as good as any in the country,” Pat Kelsey said. “Two of the better teams, I think, were playing tonight. It was a big-time college atmosphere and they’re a really, really good team and there’s a lot of good teams in our conference.”

Louisville started this season by going 7-4 against a difficult non-conference schedule. Since then, Kelsey has led the Cardinals to a strong start in ACC play. Louisville is now 5-1 in ACC play and hasn’t lost since December 14th to Kentucky.

“Sometimes when I get questions like that, to talk about the trees and the big picture, and all the other teams in the conference, I am so narrow-minded focused on the next team we play against,” Kelsey said. “So, I’m an expert at Duke, because we played them, Florida State, because we played them, Virginia, because we played them, Clemson, because we played them, these guys, because we played them, Carolina. I don’t know anything about anybody else because I don’t have the bandwidth in this pea-brain of mine to worry about that many other teams because we have like 40 of them in the conference now.”