Pat Kelsey on the transfer portal at Louisville: 'It giveth and it taketh away'

Louisville had a complete rebuild to undergo this offseason to tear down the 12-52 span of Kenny Payne and create something for the upcoming season under Pat Kelsey. Thankfully for them, though, we live in the years of the transfer portal where building a competitive team is as easy as it is for teams like the Cardinals.

Kelsey spoke with Jon Rothstein on ‘College Hoops Today’ about the portal and how it has been beneficial for him and his new program. Rather than being in a bad spot in starting from nothing at ground zero, Louisville, like other teams, has been able to field a team, and do so quickly this offseason, that projects decently.

“The portal, in the era? The portal era is here and it’s here to stay,” Kelsey said. “Look, in a bunch of different ways – which is beyond the scope of this interview. We could talk for an hour on that as well, just the seismic shift in collegiate athletics here right now. It’s probably the biggest seismic shift in history.”

“With the transfer portal, it giveth and it taketh away, so to speak. Where, you know, you can lose guys in a given year but it’s possible to construct a winning roster in a short amount of time,” said Kelsey. “Listen, months ago when I got this job, we had exactly zero scholarship players on our roster. That’s zero. Something like that happened five, six years ago, much less 10? You’re talking about a monumental rebuild that could take a decade or several years at least. The nice thing is you can obviously build a roster, do it quickly, and put together a winning roster.”

As an athletic department, Louisville has invested themselves into the portal. That was necessary for basketball, though, after they lost 13 players by transfer following the coaching change.

In turn, Kelsey and the Cardinals have added 11 transfers this offseason. They make up the No. 1 class in On3’s 2024 Team Transfer Portal Rankings. Those additions include Terrence Edwards Jr. (James Madison), Chucky Hepburn (Wisconsin), Kasean Pryor (South Florida), Koren Johnson (Washington), Aly Khalifa (BYU), J’Vonne Hadley (Colorado), Aboubacar Traore (Long Beach State), and Noah Waterman (BYU). Three others followed Kelsey from Charleston in Reyne Smith, James Scott, and Kobe Rodgers.

Edwards Jr. (No. 32 overall, No. 7 SF), Pryor (No. 72, No. 19 SF), and Johnson (No. 99, No. 23 PG) are their highest-rated additions. That’s per On3’s 2024 Transfer Portal Top Players. Hepburn (No. 143, No. 33 PG), Hadley (No. 176, No. 19 CG), Khalifa (No. 204, No. 17 C), Traore (No. 211, No. 42 SF), and Scott (No. 233, No. 22 C) also rate inside the Top-250.

That’s quite the turnaround for a roster that had essentially nothing by the time the transition was done. It’s a credit to the Kelsey’s efforts, which he gave to his staff, to put together an all new team.

“Our staff has done a phenomenal job and we’ve worked very, very hard,” said Kelsey. “Here we are as we get ready to enter the June, summer-school period where we have the majority of our roster in place and we feel really good about it.”

There’s much to be interested about now with Louisville as they enter this new tenure under Kelsey. The Cardinals are just as thrilled too and can’t wait for this team to tip-off later this year.

“We’re excited,” said Kelsey. “‘Journey of a million miles begins with a single step’. All you can worry about is being excellent at the next thing is what we say all the time.”

“Excited about getting our guys here and getting started with the process,” Kelsey said. “You listen really close at night, even though it’s late May. You can already hear that ball starting to bounce in November and March will be here before you know it.”