Lesson learned? Louisville and Pat Kelsey won't let exhaustion, depth impact 2025-26 season

When the final buzzer sounded in Louisville’s 89-75 Round of 64 loss to Creighton in last year’s NCAA Tournament, hands were on hips, backs were arched, and heads were down. 

It was a difficult end to a tremendous season, one where the Cards made their first trip to the NCAA tournament since before the pandemic and made their first ACC Tournament Championship Game. 

There’s a multitude of reasons why the Cardinals couldn’t fly past the Blue Jays, but it was evident that Louisville was completely gassed, both physically and emotionally. 

Depth was a strength coming into Pat Kelsey’s first season as head coach, but as injuries mounted, it grew into a weakness. 

Louisville lost both Koren Johnson and Kasean Pryor for the season last November, two players who were expected to be key contributors throughout the season. Both played less than eight games. 

In the NCAA Tournament loss to Creighton, Louisville played four players more than 25 minutes and only three scored in double-figures — Chucky Hepburn, Terrence Edwards Jr. and J’Vonne Hadley. 

Those three played over 80 percent of Louisville’s minutes last season, which is a massive number. For reference, across the teams in last season’s final four (Duke, Florida, Houston, Auburn), there was just one player (!!!) who played over 80 percent of their team’s minutes: Houston’s LJ Cryer (80.3%).

Having your three best players carry such an exhausting amount of minutes is not a winning recipe in college basketball.

Louisville’s run to ACC Title game was physically draining 

Kelsey said following the Cards’ run to the ACC Championship game against Duke, that it was some of the most physically draining basketball he had ever coached. Across the three-day stretch in Charlotte, Louisville mostly functioned with a six or seven man rotation, with Hadley, Hepburn, Edwards playing 35-plus minutes each outing. 

It took a miraculous buzzer-beater from Hepburn to beat Stanford in the quarterfinal, followed by a frantic finish to the semifinal matchup against Clemson, where the Tigers stormed back and had a chance to tie it in the finals seconds. The Cards were leading Duke in the title-game at the break, but in the end the Blue Devils were too much to handle. 

In that stretch, Australian sharpshooter Reyne Smith was out with an ankle injury and Aboubacar Traore, who missed a chunk of the season with a broken arm, and true-freshman Khani Rooths were the two off the bench. 

Just five days later, the U of L had to play Big East runner-up Creighton in the first game of the NCAA Tournament. It was a brutal stretch for Louisville and in Lexington, the exhaustion began to show. Center James Scott was sick and nauseous for parts of the game and was in the locker room, and Smith re-aggravated his ankle after hobbling through the first 20 minutes. Not to mention, Hadley was playing with a baseball-sized lump on his elbow. 

Simply put, Louisville didn’t have many options towards the end of the season. Noah Waterman had surgery on his thumb in December and never seemed to get back to full form, and the Cards had two scholarship seats taken up by Aly Khalifa and Kobe Rodgers, who redshirted. 

They were battered and bruised. 

Returning to the mean 

When Kelsey was at Charleston and even back to his Winthrop days, his teams typically hovered in the top-50 in adjusted tempo according to Kenpom. In 2022, Charleston had the No. 2 tempo in the entire country. Last season, Louisville’s tempo was 69.1 — 90th in the nation. That is the lowest mark by a Kelsey team since 2015. 

It was almost out of necessity. Yes, the competition in the ACC is better, and defenses are better coached, but Louisville had no choice but to slow things down. Playing with patience isn’t necessarily a bad thing either, but Louisville’s options were limited last season because of a crippled roster. 

With the frantic, free-flowing, and playless style of offense he implements, it benefits the Cards to get in transition and get shots up early and often. Having depth is the easiest way to make this work. In Kelsey’s final two years at Charleston, which ended in trips to the big dance, there were only three players who played over 65 percent of the Cougars’ minutes: Jaylon Scott (67.9%) & Ryan Larson (70.1%) in 2023, and of course Reyne Smith (65.3%) in 2024. These minute percentages are much more realistic for a Kelsey-led team. 

Heading into the 2025-26 season, many have Louisville as a top-10 team entering the fall, and for good reason. They have 12 players who project to be contributors. Circumstances and injuries can change things, but the Cardinals are more athletic, have more size/strength, and more speed than last season. 

Transfer guards Ryan Conwell and Isaac McKneely have played 30-plus games in each season since they entered college. International forwards and newcomers Evangelos Zougris and Sananda Fru have professional basketball experience playing against grown men. And, Khalifa and Rodgers are finally healthy, conditioned, and ready to go. 

The Cards have a chance to be one of the deepest and best-conditioned teams in college basketball. Let’s just say Kelsey and staff learned their lesson, and hopefully lightning never strikes the same place twice.