Louisville men’s basketball coach Pat Kelsey has a vision to turn the Cards (back) into contenders

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — It looked perfect, like a stolen dream … except for that damn wall of windows.

You see, Pat Kelsey’s always had an eye for design. When his father, Mike, dug up the family backyard in Finneytown, Ohio, and poured enough concrete for a basketball half court, he trusted Pat — a nine-year-old — to paint the lines.

Decades later, when Kelsey got his first head coaching job at Winthrop in 2012, one of his earliest “official” acts was inviting a longtime carpenter buddy down to Rock Hill, S.C., so the two could remodel the Eagles’ facilities (including painting the locker room). Kelsey taught himself Microsoft PowerPoint and other graphic design tools, so he could make custom pitches for recruits — including, at least once, a pop-up, proposal-style ring box.

Then, in 2016-17, Kelsey promised that season’s Eagles that he’d get his first tattoo if they made the NCAA Tournament. So when Winthrop clinched its bid, Kelsey ponied up; he found a local tattoo artist and described the general Polynesian print he liked and wanted on his left biceps and shoulder. Nine hours later, the coach was inked.

“I’d always wanted to do it, but I’m like, hey, I’m a Division-I coach,” Kelsey said, rolling up his left sleeve to reveal the final product. “But you know, life’s too short. This is who I am.”

Which is to say, someone who’s always had an idea how things should look.

It should be no surprise, then, that in Kelsey’s Finneytown backyard, in college down the road at Xavier, in all his coaching stops thereafter — Wake Forest, Winthrop, College of Charleston — the now-49-year-old has always had a vision of his dream program, down to the color of the carpet.

And then came March, when Louisville hired him as its men’s basketball coach.

After the worst two seasons in program history — the Cards’ disastrous 12-52 record not befitting a program with three national titles — Louisville needed someone with a grander vision. Someone who understands how one of college basketball’s most storied brands is supposed to operate, and what it should look like, and feel like. The Cards aren’t just this city’s de facto pro team; they’re as deeply ingrained in the culture as bourbon and horse racing. Sure, Kelsey’s job is to win games and hang banners — but it’s also to restore a city’s lost pride, to resuscitate a fan base on the brink of flatlining.

That program he viewed as “picture perfect?” It desperately needed a facelift.

Which brings us back to the windows.

From the first time Kelsey saw his Louisville office, he loved it. The oversized black marble desk. The matching leather sofas, with finely primped red pillows. But most of all, the wall of sliding glass doors, opening onto a second-story balcony overlooking UL’s state-of-the-art practice gym. It’s a direct sightline from his office seat to any player getting up late-night shots.

“This is my office?” 👇#GoCards pic.twitter.com/QAhj3VfiNZ

— Louisville Men’s Basketball (@LouisvilleMBB) March 29, 2024

But therein lies the importance of design. Because while a wall of glass makes for a beautiful view, it basically couldn’t be worse for soundproofing.

Kelsey learned that the hard way this spring. Before he bought a house in Derby City, Kelsey needed a place to crash. So in the back-corner closet of his office — behind a tall black door with a single sheet of printer paper, reading PRIVATE — Kelsey had a bed installed, to go with the shower already there. He ducked into the closet for a few hours rest — only to hear a ball bouncing through the drywall. And then, boom: The gym speakers roared to life, with a hip-hop soundtrack cranked to full blast.

It’s the only time in Kelsey’s 13-year head coaching career, he joked, that he ever wished a player wasn’t in the gym. A few design tweaks are probably in order.

“I don’t have a crystal ball. I can’t tell you 1,000 percent this thing’s going to end up the way that I want it to, because that’s life, but I’m a confident person,” Kelsey said. “That might go against the code of coaching — hey, you’ve got to under-promise and over-deliver — and I just … can’t. If we’re taking the floor, we’re going to win.”

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Tucked away in the janitorial closet of a first-floor men’s room in the Louisville practice facility, amid mops and a cart full of cleaning supplies, is a life-sized cardboard cutout. A familiar face.

So much for moving on from Rick Pitino.

Can you blame Cards fans? During Pitino’s 16-year tenure, he piled up wins, titles, glory — until the scale finally tipped, and off-court scandal eclipsed his overwhelming on-court success. Down came the 2013 national championship banner — even if we all saw the Cards win it — and with it, Louisville falling from its rightful place among the college hoops hierarchy.

Pitino was unceremoniously fired in October 2017, a month before what would’ve been his 17th season in town.

Louisville hasn’t won an NCAA Tournament game since.

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Instead, four coaches have come and gone over the past seven years, none coming close to replicating Pitino’s gravitas. (The “interim” qualifier doesn’t feel necessary, considering how temporary all four were.) The most recent aspirant, Kenny Payne, felt like the closest thing UL had to a slam-dunk option, until he wasn’t. He’d helped hang the program’s 1986 banner and developed countless future NBA stars at Kentucky, but failed to rally the city like he had as a player. The program became a borderline embarrassment; UL was the nation’s worst high-major team in Payne’s debut season, per KenPom, and second-worst last season. By March, athletic director Josh Heird practically had no choice; he paid Payne just over $7 million, per public records, to pass the sticks.

“As an alum,” said Peyton Siva, the point guard on Pitino’s 2013 title team, and currently UL’s director of player development, “it’s just been pretty tough to watch.”

Heird’s job this offseason, then, was not just hiring the best X’s and O’s tactician. “There’s a lot of good basketball coaches,” he said. “Where the list gets whittled down pretty quickly is when it comes to, can you handle all the other things around this job?”

Heird fired Payne on a Wednesday. He started calling candidates — Kelsey included — on Thursday. Heird went into the search without one name in mind and acknowledged he “knew it was going to be called a little bit of a mess from an outsider’s perspective.”

That’s what transpired, especially when high-profile candidates — such as Dusty May, who wound up at Michigan — started coming off the board. But considering the court of public opinion had practically appointed Payne for Heird, he couldn’t afford to not be thorough.

It helped that Heird and Kelsey had met before, in Dec. 2020, when Kelsey’s final Winthrop team came to Louisville for a series of pandemic bubble-like games at the KFC Yum! Center. And while they only occasionally crossed paths thereafter, that connection at least greased the wheels in their early conversations. Heird was already aware, for instance, that after Kelsey left Winthrop in 2021, he compiled a 73.5 percent winning rate in three seasons at Charleston, including consecutive 27-win campaigns, two Coastal Athletic Association regular-season and tournament titles, and even a Top-25 ranking.

But after a few productive chats, the trail went stale. Kelsey told his wife, Lisa, not to get her hopes up. “When it kind of goes silent,” Kelsey said, “they’re probably going in another direction.”

What Kelsey didn’t know was that Heird was vetting him, even reaching out to a close confidant for advice: former Villanova coach Jay Wright. (Heird was at Villanova from 2016-2019, when Wright won two national championships.) Kelsey’s final Winthrop team drew Villanova in the first round of the 2021 NCAA Tournament. The Wildcats won, 73-63, but Wright was impressed by Kelsey, his staff and his team. Heird was starting to think he had his guy. But he wanted Wright to call Kelsey and report back.

Heird still has Wright’s voicemail with the Hall of Famer’s endorsement.

Kelsey sent Heird one final text, a few days after his call with Wright:

I want Louisville. I would run there.

Heird texted back 15 minutes later.

“Can you do a Zoom tonight?”

At 9:30 that night, Kelsey and Heird reconvened — and Heird told Kelsey he was close to offering the job. But he wanted them both to sleep on it.

On the following morning’s video call, Heird started talking terms, Kelsey’s first duties when he landed — but he never flat-out offered. Kelsey interrupted: “I go, Josh, are you offering me the job?” Heird said yes — and Kelsey shot up out of his seat, fist pumping and skipping in full view of the camera.

“When I’m driving home, I’m floating,” Kelsey said. “(Josh) wanted somebody who really, really, really wanted to be here — and this is Louisville, man. The greatest honor of my professional life would be to be the head coach here. To be a blue blood. Denny Crum, Rick Pitino. National championships. You wait your whole life for that perfect opportunity.”

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To celebrate Kelsey’s hiring, Heird and his wife took Pat and Lisa out for dinner, to a local Italian spot called Volare.

When Kelsey and Lisa walked in, Heird noticed other diners lean sideways out of their seats for a glimpse of the newcomer with thick-rimmed black glasses. Volare’s patrons quickly confirmed that, yes, that was Louisville’s new coach — which is when seemingly the entire restaurant stood up and cheered: C-A-R-D-S, Cards!

“Was totally not prepared for that,” Kelsey said, with a chuckle. “Like, I knew the coach at Louisville was a big deal, but I had no idea how much. Gosh darn, it’s everywhere.”

If Kelsey’s pumping gas, or picking up Jimmy John’s for lunch, fans follow — and usually ask some variation of the question: When can we expect to win again?

“The city wants to cheer on somebody. They want to be able to get out there and support,” Siva said. “It’s what makes Louisville, Louisville: the fan base.”

That fandom hasn’t dissipated since Pitino left; it just mutated, manifesting in anger and hyper-fixation and not much patience. It’s Kelsey’s job — he signed a five-year contract that pays $2.3 million annually — to swing the pendulum back, to let hope be a rising tide that turns the Yum! back into one of college basketball’s best venues. Basically, he has to harness the power of Louisville’s passion, rather than be consumed by it, like his predecessors.

The early returns are promising. Hope is not just an abstract sentiment anymore; it’s quantifiable, through NIL donations and helicopters greeting high-profile recruits when they land in town. What does it say, then, that UL’s 502Circle collective set a single-day new membership record the day Kelsey’s hiring was announced? Or that it hit a million-dollar match campaign in days, filling the Cards’ NIL coffers?

“Nationally, I think a lot of people questioned: Does Louisville still have it?” said Dan Furman, 502Circle’s CEO and a former school administrator in charge of major gifts. “That debunked that pretty quickly.”

Kelsey, the son of a car salesman, hasn’t been shy about community outreach. He’s as liable to speak to dozens of students after an open practice — goodwill doesn’t have to cost anything— as 10 donors at a fancy steak dinner. “What we do is sell hope,” Furman said, “and right now, there’s a lot of hope.” That second-story balcony off Kelsey’s office is a prime example. It’s become a de facto turnstile for donors, a new set of suits at seemingly each practice. Every visitor receives that day’s practice plan, plus a sheet with photos of every scholarship player.

People should know what they’re paying for, right?

“He’s shown he can handle all of this,” Heird said, gesturing with both hands. “Now, can he coach basketball?”

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The pass was pristine: in traffic, in stride, from the top of the key right through the center of the lane. But 6-foot-10 center Frank Anselem-Ibe — one of Louisville’s 13 new scholarship players this season, since the previous roster scattered — couldn’t corral it; instead, Khani Rooths’ would-be dime hit him in the knees, before bobbling out of bounds.

A whistle blew. There went Kelsey.

“Oh, my God, that was a fantastic pass. I freaking love that pass!”

Pause.

“But, Frank, what’s better for you?

“I can corral those passes,” Anselem-Ibe said, pointing at the ceiling while retelling the story, “but it’s easier for me to get it up there.”

Three possessions, voila: Rooths hit springy forward James Scott — one of three players who followed Kelsey from Charleston — for an alley-oop dunk.

Kelsey’s rose-colored version of constructive criticism seems particularly effective. That four-word phrase — “I love it, but …” — gets worn out regularly. Like any coach, Kelsey can snap, but largely? His relentless, unyielding optimism is contagious on the court, much like it has been throughout the community.

Plus, that sentiment hits a little harder coming from someone who radiates kinetic energy.

The late Skip Prosser — Kelsey’s college coach and mentor — used to say coffee was allergic to Kelsey, not the other way around. “I’m going into my fourth year with him,” said Reyne Smith, another Charleston import, “and I’ve never left a practice thinking, ‘Damn, PK was a little off.’” When J’Vonne Hadley and his mother visited campus this summer, they were waiting for Kelsey in Louisville’s film room when suddenly music started playing. Seconds later, Kelsey quite literally ran into the room, blowing up the door like he wants his players to destroy screens. “He loves,” Hadley said, “his entrances.”

Kelsey’s teams play how he acts. Eight of his past nine teams have been top-50 nationally in tempo, per KenPom. (The lone exception came last season when Charleston finished 51st.) Early in Kelsey’s Winthrop tenure, a stranger walked into his office one day and asked to watch practice. Kelsey obliged (shocker), before questioning if the man was a coach. It turned out to be Nick Nurse — then a Toronto Raptors assistant, now head coach of the 76ers — whose now-wife, Roberta, was an assistant volleyball coach for the Eagles. Nurse and Kelsey developed a friendship, and over the years, Kelsey’s leaned further into the 3-point-centric offense currently proliferating in the pros. Ten of his 12 teams have been top-75 nationally in 3-point rate, per KenPom, with each of the past two ranking top 20.

“We’ll shoot 45 3s in a game,” said assistant Brian Kloman, Kelsey’s right-hand man who was also with him at Winthrop and Charleston. “You don’t do that (if you’re uptight).”

It’s attractive to fans and players alike. When former Wisconsin guard Chucky Hepburn entered the transfer portal this offseason, his chief priorities were finding a quicker pace of play and a coach who’d “put that confidence back in me.” After consulting with his agent, Louisville — really, Kelsey — checked both boxes.

But another reason Hepburn wanted to come to Derby City? He remembered the good days.

Siva was Hepburn’s favorite point guard when he was little, and he fondly remembers that 2013 championship team. Even growing up in Omaha, Neb., “it’s hard to miss out on Louisville,” Hepburn said, “whether they’re doing good or bad.” Through a TV screen, he saw the Yum! bumping at its best. He knew the Cards as the then-kings of college hoops.

Why can’t they be again?

“Louisville needed a revival,” Hadley said. “It needed something to happen. And having a winning coaching staff come to Louisville, that’s the first step. … We’re all hungry to bring Louisville back to where it was.”

 (Top photo: Andy Lyons / Getty Images)