Projecting Louisville Men's Basketball's Strengths in 2024-25

The Cardinals are entering year one of the Pat Kelsey era.

Jan 6, 2024; Hattiesburg, Mississippi, USA; James Madison Dukes guard Terrence Edwards Jr. (5) drives around a pick / Chuck Cook-USA TODAY Sports

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - As new head coach Pat Kelsey recently put it, it has certainly been a whirlwind of an offseason for the Louisville men's basketball program.

For starters, second-year head coach Kenny Payne was dismissed just one day removed from their abysmal 8-24 season. As expected, it triggered a multitude of roster construction dominoes over the next month-plus.

Not long after Payne's firing became official, players began to immediately hop in the portal. Eventually, all 12 scholarship players from the 2023-24 season decided that they wanted to continue their collegiate career elsewhere.

In the roughly two months since Kelsey was officially hired to take over the Cardinals on Mar. 28, he and his staff have been extremely hard at work. As of Tuesday, all 13 scholarship spots have been filled - with 12 going to D1 transfers and one to a high school prospect.

There's still plenty of time between now and the start of the season, but it's hard to imagine Louisville not being competitive in year one of the Kelsey era. According toOn3's team transfer portal rankings, which takes into account transfers both in and out, Louisville has the No. 1 transfer portal class in all of college basketball. The Cardinals were also placed at No. 4 in 247Sports' post-spring ACC Power Rankings.

"The nice thing is you can obviously build a roster and do it quickly and put together a winning roster, and that's what I think we've done," Kelsey said in a recent interview with Jon Rothstein on the College Hoops Today podcast. "Our staff has done a phenomenal job, and they've worked very, very hard, and here we are as we get ready to enter the June summer school period where we have a majority of our roster in place and we feel really good about it. We're excited."

While there's still roughly six months until the start of the 2024-25 college basketball season, with Louisville's roster now complete, now we can begin a more intimate breakdown and analysis of the roster as a whole. So what are some of our very early projections as to the strengths of next season's team? Here are three below:

Three-Point Shooting

Of the many things that went wrong during the Kenny Payne era from purely a basketball standpoint, their ability to hit the three ball was one of their biggest weaknesses. Their 30.6 percentage on three-point attempts last season ranked 324th out of 362 D1 teams, while their 32.9 percentage in 2022-23 was 228th. The last time that Louisville had a team three-point percentage that didn't rank in the 200s or worse was the 2019-20 season, when their 37.6 percentage actually ranked 15th.

Under Pat Kelsey, and especially in year one under his helm, three point shooting will become a bona fide strength.

For starters, his fast paced five-out offensive system has always catered well to the three-pointer. In his 12 prior seasons as a head coach, his teams have shot 35.0 percent or better from long distance in seven of them. His teams also take a lot of threes, as they have ranked in the top-60 in percentage of total field goal attempts (3PA/FGA) eight times.

Of course, having a system that favors the three-point shot is useless if it doesn't have the personnel to properly utilize it. Fortunately for Louisville, Kelsey is bringing a plethora of long range threats.

Eight of the transfer newcomers shot at least 32 percent from three, six of them shot 35 percent or better, while three connected on 39 percent or better. Reyne Smith hit 39.5 percent of his attempts and was ninth nationally in made threes at 112, J'Vonne Hadley connected on 41.7 percent of his threes, while Kobe Rodgers was a blazing 45.0 percent.

Even some of the transfers who had "down" seasons last year when shooting the three have shown that they can hit them at a high caliber. Terrence Edwards Jr. hit them at 34.3 clip last season, but was an astounding 45.8 percent the year before. Chucky Hepburn connected on 32.3 percent of his long balls this year, but was 40.5 percent in 2022-23. Why Aly Khalifa hit 31.5 percent of his and won't play this season, he still was 38.1 percent the year before.

While there is sure to be a little bit of a transition with facing stiffer competition for some of these guys, Louisville has three-point options in the backcourt, the wing and even the front court.

Defensive Versatility

Even with how bad the three-point shooting was under Payne, his calling card for futility was undoubtedly on defense. Just last season alone, their 79.1 points allowed per game ranked 326th, while their adjusted defensive efficiency on KenPom ranked 214th.

Sure, Kelsey-led teams haven't really been known for their defensive acumen. Of his 12 prior teams, just two of them cracked the top-100 in terms of KenPom's adjusted defensive efficiency. That being said, it seems that Kelsey was determined to buck that trend for his first season with the Cardinals.

For starters, nearly every player on the roster can play multiple positions on either end of the court. Some can play the two and the three, others the three and four or the four and five, while a few - such as Hadley and Aboubacar Traore - can play three different spot on the floor.

Only three players seem to be pigeon-holed to one spot: Hepburn at point guard, plus James Scott and Frank Anselem-Ibe at center. Outside of those three, the roster is fairly interchangeable.

On top of said versatility, nearly the entire roster is an asset on the defensive end of the floor. Of the 12 transfers, nine of them had either a steal percentage of over 2.0 percent, or a block percentage of over 3.0 percent.

With a few of these newcomers, you can go as far to say that they are defensive stalwarts. Hepburn's 2.1 steals per game ranked 37th nationally, his 3.9 steal percentage was 42nd, and he was named to the Big Ten All-Defensive Team. Aboubacar Traore was the only player in D1 under 6-foot-6 with a block percentage of 5.2 and a steal percentage of 2.5. Kasean Pryor is one of four D1 players at 6-foot-10 or taller with a block percentage of 3.0 and a steal percentage of 2.6. Scott and Anselem-Ibe had block rates of 8.4 and 7.5 percent, respectively.

While there are bound to be some early-season hiccups when trying to get the kinks ironed out on defense, at the very minimum, Louisville has the pieces to put together a competent defense that has a potentially high ceiling.

Winning Experience and Production

One of the prevailing themes of the Kenny Payne era, as evidenced by the 12-52 overall record, was the team's inability to pull through when it mattered most. Whenever Louisville wasn't getting boat raced and actually had a chance to close out late in the game and capture a win, far too often did they have no idea how to actually do so.

On top of finding players that fit his system, it's very evident that Kelsey also wanted to bring in players that knew what to do late in games when the rubber hits the road. Next season, Louisville will not be short on guys with postseason experience and winning overall, and in some cases postseason production.

Of the 12 transfer newcomers, nine of them played in the NCAA Tournament last season. Considering the program hasn't even been to the Big Dance since 2019, having over half your roster know what it takes to get to the NCAAs is crucial if the Cardinals are to make their triumphant return to the tournament.

Additionally, a large chunk of the newcomers received some form of postseason accolade. Here's a full break down on that front:

• One Conference Player of the Year (Edwards - Sun Belt)
• Two Conference Tournament MVPs (Smith - CAA, Traore - Big West)
• Two First-Team All-Conference Selections (Edwards - Sun Belt, Traore - Big West)
• Four All-Conference Tournament Team Selections (Hepburn - Big Ten, Rodgers and Smith - CAA, Traore - Big West)
• One Conference All-Freshman (Scott - CAA)
• One Conference Sixth Man of the Year (Koren Johnson - Pac-12)
• One Conference All-Defense (Hepburn - Big Ten)

In fact, when you put it all together, only two transfer newcomers had no postseason accolades or didn’t reach NCAA Tournament last season: Pryor and Anselem-Ibe.

While Louisville still has an entire offseason to get through, it's very hard to imagine that this team won't be in the hunt for an NCAA Tournament bid come next February and March. Even with everything that the Cardinals have been through over the last few years.

(Photo of Terrence Edwards Jr.: Chuck Cook - USA TODAY Sports)

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