Louisville Makes Portal Splash With Flory Bidunga and Jackson Shelstad

On a weekend when many teams locked in their first transfer portal commitments of the cycle, no team made a bigger splash than Louisville.

The Cardinals landed two of the biggest fish to come off the board early: Kansas center Flory Bidunga and Oregon guard Jackson Shelstad. The duo, who are represented by the same agency, announced their commitments to Louisville together, becoming the faces of a roster reload that could position Louisville as one of the top teams in college basketball in the 2026–27 season.

Bidunga is arguably the best player who will change teams this offseason, and with a weak high school class he could be argued as the top newcomer in the entire sport for next season. He’s one of the sport’s best defensive players, using his pogo-stick athleticism to block shots at the rim and his elite mobility to slide his feet defensively against smaller players on the perimeter. While still limited as an offensive player, he’s a monster lob threat and top-tier play finisher as a whole thanks to his vertical athleticism and excellent hands. Beating out the likes of Duke and Michigan for him is seismic.

Joining him early is Shelstad, a three-year starter at Oregon who hit the portal after an injury-riddled 2025–26 season. While not the type of pick-and-roll playmaker you might script as the point guard for Bidunga to play with, he’s a terrific shotmaker and has proven that at the highest levels of the sport.

Former Oregon guard Jackson Shelstad committed to Louisville on Sunday. | Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images

And Louisville doesn’t seem close to done yet. The Cardinals have been among the most aggressive in hunting the portal of any program thus far, and the investment to land Shelstad and Bidunga is believed to be in the high seven figures combined. In conversations with several general managers, coaches, agents and other insiders, it’s expected that those at the very top of the roster budget food chain will end up paying $20 million or more to build teams this spring. Louisville’s early splash on this duo sets the table for them to be in that tier of roster expenditures.

Spending that aggressively doesn’t come without a cost though. Coach Pat Kelsey had close to a 100% approval rating in Louisville after a dream first season with the Cardinals, flipping things quickly from an 8–24 season under Kenny Payne to 27 wins in his opening campaign. This past season was a mild disappointment though, not quite living up to the lofty preseason No. 11 ranking before eventually bowing out in the round of 32 to Michigan State. In 12 games against top-40 KenPom opponents, Louisville went just 3–9, missing some real opportunities to move the needle with a talented group headlined by likely top-10 NBA draft pick Mikel Brown Jr.

Simply getting Louisville back to competence was a key first step, but the expectations there have always been higher than that. Swinging this big in the portal (and with financial backing that it took to make that happen) means that simply making the tournament won’t be enough. Louisville clearly means business, and if Kelsey can’t get a group like this to serious ACC title contention and a deep run in the NCAA tournament, he’ll start feeling the heat in a hurry at a place with the expectations to get to Final Fours and the resources to do just that.

The roster needs a lot of work beyond these two stars at the top though. As things currently stand, just one of Louisville’s top 10 scorers from a year ago is set to return, with sophomore guard Adrian Wooley the last man standing after transfer portal, graduation and draft declarations. Louisville did add former G League guard London Johnson at the semester break, but will need substantial reinforcements around Shelstad and Bidunga to build a championship-caliber roster. The hope with landing two stars like Shelstad and Bidunga is often that it makes Louisville a much more attractive destination for other top portal and international prospects coming off the board in the coming weeks.

All told, consider it a massive early win for Kelsey and Louisville to land a pair of stars to headline what could be one of the best teams in the country. But with it will come expectations Kelsey hasn’t felt yet. This third year all of a sudden looks like a tenure-defining season for Kelsey at one of college basketball’s biggest programs.

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