What Pat Kelsey, Louisville Players Said After 87-46 Win vs. Eastern Michigan

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The Louisville men's basketball remains undefeated through their first six games of the 2025-26 season, easily capturing an 87-46 victory against Eastern Michigan on Monday night.

Here's what head coach Pat Kelsey, guard Adrian Wooley, guard Isaac McKneely and center Aly Khalifa had to say following the win:

Head Coach Pat Kelsey

(Opening Statement)

“I have known Coach (Stan) Heath for a long time and met him on several occasions. I have the utmost respect for him. He has been a head coach for a long, long time both in college and at the professional level. He has a good team. I really believe that the MAC is a heck of a conference. A couple months from now we will look back, and this will be a good win. I think they are going to be a contender in that league. They have the pieces. They are a strong, physical team. I was proud of our guys because I feel like we met that physical challenge tonight. We knew it was going to be that type of game. I thought we got a huge boost off the bench. Khani (Rooths) Aly (Khalifa). Adrian (Wooley) and Kobe (Rodgers) all gave us a huge boost. In the locker room afterwards, we pick out a couple of guys and I mentioned them. The guys were all excited when I got to Aly and they all cheered. I said here is Aly’s line: 11 points and they all cheered, six rebounds and they all cheered and five assists and they all cheered. And I said ‘drum roll, three blocks’ and they all went crazy. I thought it was kind of fun. We have a quick turnaround. We have to recover tonight. We have to be smart about how we practice tonight from a physical standpoint. We will have a great day of preparation with film and walk-through for another battle on Wednesday.”

(On not letting offense effect the defensive performance) “I agree, I feel like they player really hard on the defensive end. Their metrics and from everything that I’ve studied on film going in, I have a ton of respect for those guys and to hold them to point seven-something points per possession, that was really, really good. They have a bunch of dangerous pieces, and we were very attentive to the scouting report. You’re right, early on I thought we were generating really good shots, but we didn’t allow missing those shots. We had some chippies around the rim. We had some open threes. We missed a couple free throws, but we continued to guard. I thought in the first half especially; we were elite defensively. I felt like there was a little lull there in the second half, right about the 12-minute media [timeout], when we just got a little bit lazy off the ball, I felt our friction. The pick and roll wasn’t as good. They knew when we came the eight-minute media [timeout], that I wasn’t happy. But I felt like we went out after that, responded and really upped our defense and finished the game the right way.”

(On Aly Khalifa’s performance and was there a problem with him shooting three-pointers) “No, ff you are open, shoot it, that’s why he came to Louisville. Aly [Khalifa] is a really good shooter. He’s got a great touch. It’s one of the things that makes him really difficult to guard at the five position, because you have to make some hard decisions on pick and roll with him. Because if you’re in drop coverage, like they were today, he’s going to be open on those throwbacks. He makes them at a really good clip. So that puts fear in other coaches’ and opponents’ mind when they’re scouting us and preparing because he’s a good three-point shooter. I encourage guys to shoot more, because three-point rate is important to me as well. To me, that is almost more important than percentage as crazy as that sounds. Obviously, you have to be able to shoot at a enough of a percentage to be somewhere around one point per shot. But first thing I do is look at rate, if a guy is not shooting a good percentage, but 40 percent of his overall shots are threes, you know he’s a guy that you have to respect his ability to shoot the ball. So, I’m glad he got those attempts, and I want him to shoot every time he’s open.”

Guard Adrian Wooley, Guard Isaac McKneely and Center Aly Khalifa

Aly Khalifa, R-Sr., C

(On the team’s defensive effort holding Eastern Michigan to under 20 points in the first half)

“Our prep is elite and I give all credit to our scout team. I was part of the scout team last year – they come in early for hours, just prepping - all the coaches, the walk-ons, everybody on the scout team, the graduate assistants – just give them all the credit for preparing us every single game and the standard is the standard no matter who we’re playing.”

(On where he feels he is after recovering from surgery)

“I feel like I’m doing good, just getting back to it, this is only my sixth game of the season. Just getting back to it, having fun, I love playing with these guys out there. It’s been so long, so just getting back into rhythm and knock the first shot down. It’s all about confidence, getting back to being confident and today was a big day for me.”

Adrian Wooley, So., G

(On his mentality coming off the bench)

“I just know that I’ve got to come off the bench and be an Energizer Bunny and having the utmost confidence in myself to help my teammates out. My role is being embraced on the defensive end this year, so I’m taking the biggest step this year into that this year and try to get better at that each and every time I step on the floor.”

(On whether he feels like Louisville is one of the best teams in the country coming off the bench)

“I feel like that for sure. I feel like we can do the same thing that everybody else does. Basketball is a game of runs so things are going to happen, but we just help our teammates and try to pick each other up every time something happens or somebody messes up.”

Isaac McNeely, Sr., G

(On the team’s defensive effort holding Eastern Michigan to under 20 points in the first half)

“I think it starts with our prep, we take prep very seriously, we watch a ton of film. Every opponent, no matter who it is, we watch a ton of film. You’ll hear our bench screaming out their out of bounds plays if we see them in a certain set, we know exactly what they are doing. When you’re that locked in on your prep, it makes defense a lot easier and I think we’re just flying around playing our guts out out there as well.”

(On how much they needed last week’s game against Cincinnati when they overcame early challenges)

“Cincinnati provided a different challenge, we hadn’t played a team as physical as them all year – they were the No. 2 defense in the country at that point. I think we just proved we can win games with our defense. We’re not always going to shoot the ball great every night and on those nights we needed our defense to step up and I think we proved that in that game and we’re going to hopefully continue to prove that as well.”

Head Coach Pat Kelsey

Guard Adrian Wooley, Guard Isaac McKneely and Center Aly Khalifa

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