Louisville Not Succumbing to the Weight of Expectations for the 2025-26 Season

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - While we're still in the middle of another long offseason, the return of college basketball will be here before you know it. The upcoming 2025-26 season is roughly 100 days away, and for Louisville, they have the pieces to be one of the best teams in the entire country.

For starters, guard/forward J'Vonne Hadley and forward Kasean Pryor, two of the Cardinals' top players from year one under head coach Pat Kelsey, are running it back. Both had the opportunity to take advantage of the Diego Pavia ruling and return for one final year in college.

Additionally, all three of UofL's portal newcomers - Virginia guard Isaac McKneely, Xavier guard Ryan Conwell and Kennesaw State guard Adrian Wooley - were top-25 transfers in the cycle, per On3. In the Class of 2025, Mikel Brown Jr. is a five-star prospect who was the best high school point guard in the nation last season, and two of the their international pickups - forward/center Sananda Fru and forward Mouhamed Camara - are four-star recruit.

Put it all together, and the Cardinals have routinely been tabbed as a preseason top 5-10 team heading into the 2025-26 season. This team very much has second weekend of the NCAA Tournament potential, and possibly beyond that.

With those expectations of a step forward from last season, naturally, comes a fair amount of pressure with it. Kelsey's first year at the helm, one where he guided UofL to a 27-8 record and their first NCAA Tournament appearance in six years, helped reset what is expected out of a program like Louisville.

But if you ask Kelsey, he doesn't feel the pressure at all, and isn't looking into where his team will be several months from now. In typical PK fashion, the only thing he's worried about the next thing.

"It's that weight lifting session now, and then it's the half-team group that we have at 1:30, and then it'll be the next half-team group that we have at 2:30, and then tomorrow it'll be the team session. That's it," he said last week. "We're just not worried about people making reservations at hotels for games down the line. I'm not worried about that. I'm worried about excellence today. That's it."

Ever since he stepped foot on campus as the head coach of the Cards, this has been a consistent message from Kelsey. Some may view this as a laissez-faire attitude, but he has long been adamant of instilling a culture in which his team is not worried about the big picture, and only focused on what is immediately in front of them.

This mindset of "keeping the main thing, the main thing" has begun to spread to the newcomers as well.

"There's really no pressure," Brown said. "I trust my work, and I trust what I've been through and everything that I've done to get to this point, so I'm gonna keep doing it. I'm just going out there and hooping, having fun."

Of course, that's not to say that the team doesn't understand what's expected of them, or what the traditional standard is at a powerhouse like Louisville. The players know that they have the potential to make some serious noise this winter and spring, and are focused on attaining it.

"We surprised a lot of people last year, just with how well we did, and how quickly we made wins happen," Kobe Rodgers said. "But I don't think, this year, it's going to be a surprise for anybody. You know what we're expecting, we know what we want, we know we can achieve. We just gotta go get right, get all the chemistry and all that stuff sorted, and we're ready to go."

The process of building that aforementioned chemistry as an entire team only just recently got started. Sure, the bulk of Louisville's roster has been on campus for most of the summer, but they've only been together in totality as a team for roughly three weeks.

Two of their three international additions - Mouhamed Camara and Evangelos Zougris - didn't arrive on campus until earlier this month. Also, Brown had been away for the bulk of late June and early July competing for Team USA in the FIBA U19 World Cup.

That being said, Kelsey is already pleased with where the chemistry is at with his team.

"We're very particular in who we recruit, not just in athleticism and length and basketball skill, but the character piece is very, very important," he said. "It's much easier to put together a team that's centered on that power of the unit, which is based on love, with guys that that's their true nature, that's who they are at their core.

"I love how the guys have come together, how chemistry is starting to come together. They've all only been together now for about a week and a half, two weeks, but it's a really good group."

More Cardinals Stories