What Pat Kelsey, Louisville Players Said After 99-76 Exhibition Win vs. Bucknell

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Wrapping up exhibition play with a matchup against Bucknell, the Louisville men's basketball program leaned heavily on the three-point ball to cruise to victory, earning a 99-76 win.

Here's what head coach Pat Kelsey, point guard Mikel Brown Jr. and shooting guard Isaac McKneely had to say following the win:

Head Coach Pat Kelsey

(Opening statement)

“The first thing I want to mention is what a great cause. I talked to Bob Valvano after the game. First time I met him, I felt like I was meeting basketball royalty. As I said on the radio interview, the name Valvano is synonymous with college basketball. I told him my first memory of the NCAA tournament was when I went on a little family spring break vacation to Hilton Head in 1983. It was cold and rainy and awful, but it was the Final Four in Albuquerque when NC State made that shot at the buzzer. Bob’s brother, Jim, ran around the court like crazy. Then obviously one of the most impactful sport speeches, maybe ever, was the speech that Jimmy V gave at the Espy’s and I could almost recite it. Most of us can. It is such a nasty, nasty, horrible, wretched disease. Cancer is something that affects and has touched everyone in the room, everybody everywhere. This cause, Kentuckiana Friends of V (KFV) and Bob is such a champion to this cause that is special to his heart. It helps people dealing with cancer, it helps for cancer research. Anyone listening to this, Bob told me the early returns of the donations look really good. We will make sure everybody has the website, so please go and donate. I am glad we were able to do this for Jimmy V.

Bucknell is really good. John does an unbelievable job. I didn’t get a chance to talk to him after the game. He is a really good coach. He has that program going in the right trajectory. He runs really good stuff – his ATOs (after timeouts), baseline out of bounds. We stole one of his and I think he stole one of ours. We ran one of our plays and he ran one of our plays that we saw in preparation. I have known John for a long time. He was on the team that beat Kansas at Bucknell. My long-time friend and associate head coach Mark Prosser, who is now the head coach at Winthrop, coached John on that team. John was a fiery, tough, gritty dude. He came to Wake Forest for camp and got into a fight with every one our players. I thought our guys played well. Defended and collected the ball, all of our metrics were really, really good. We shared the ball and shot a very high percentage from three. What I was most pleased with was our assist percentage which was really high compared to our field goals.“

(On the rotation and player minutes heading into the regular season)

“I don’t think we are at that point right now where I can tell you exactly what it’s going to look like. We’ve been going since June 5, obviously gone through two exhibition games and things like that. We evaluate everything every single day. What that looks like for next week, I’m not sure yet. But, we’ve got a bunch of good players.”

Point Guard Mikel Brown Jr. and Shooting Guard Isaac McKneely

(On the past two games after a tough loss to Kansas and bouncing back to beat Bucknell)

Mikel Brown, Jr.

“Honestly, I think it was needed, just because it was my first time playing in this big of an environment in front of that crowd that we had the first game. Obviously, I didn’t play to my standards and the team’s standards as well. Looking back at it, I think it was kind of needed because it shifted my mindset back into ‘you’ve got to continue to get better.’ Those days are going to happen in this game. My team just kept instilling confidence in me and kept telling me to be myself and I’m glad we came out and got the win tonight.”

(On the offense seeming a lot more comfortable tonight)

Isaac McNeeley

“A big emphasis for us after watching film from the Kansas game and going into this game, was paint touches. We track them every game, we’re trying to get – I think it’s 50 – every single game, so a big emphasis for us was pushing it in transition. Guys like Mikel (Brown), RC [Ryan Conwell], [Adrian] Wooley, guys that can touch the paint. Playing off two was a big thing too, because we know Bucknell was going to help heavy, heavy flood and we were getting those skip passes we worked on a lot in the past few days. So it was good to see that translate to the game.”

Mikel Brown, Jr.

“We didn’t play our brand of basketball that first game. Our pace wasn’t there, our ball speed wasn’t there, we really weren’t moving the ball like we wanted to. We also weren’t getting paint touches as well, so I think coming into the game our emphasis was getting paint touches and getting great shots.”

(On the film session after the Kansas game)

Isaac McKneely

“PK [Pat Kelsey] knows it’s early, first game playing against somebody else – we’ve been playing against each other for five months, so first exposure to somebody else, he gets that. The main emphasis of the film session wasn’t Xs and Os, it was more toughness, attitude and mentality – he always talks about that. He thinks – especially early in the game – they were kind of taking it to us, but the emphasis for us is being able to take it to the other team. We’ve got to get off to better starts, but the big emphasis in the film session was just toughness and grit and that was the main message going into this game as well was grit. And I thought we displayed that tonight.”

Head Coach Pat Kelsey

Point Guard Mikel Brown Jr. and Shooting Guard Isaac McKneely

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