Will Louisville Basketball Surpass Expectations or Fall Short in Pat Kelsey’s Crucial Second Year?

Year two under Pat Kelsey’s guidance is stirring a fervor among Louisville basketball aficionados like few seasons before it . The echoes of last year’s impressive 27-8 run and a near-championship ACC finish have fans buzzing with anticipation, and rightly so . This time around, the stakes feel even higher — the Cards aren’t just dreaming of success; they’re aiming to reclaim their stature as college basketball royalty. With a blend of seasoned returners and promising newcomers, the 2025-26 roster has the potential to be a force to reckon with. The big question looming over the Yum! Center: can this squad finally break their NCAA Tournament drought for the first time since 2017? And as we edge closer to the season opener, we’ve set some tantalizing over/under lines to get you thinking, debating, and casting your bets . So, will Louisville soar, stumble or redefine their legacy? Dive in, cast your vote, and let’s keep that conversation alive all season long . LEARN MORE

• Year 2 of the Pat Kelsey era is shaping up to be the most anticipated Louisville basketball season in recent memory.
• As we near the home stretch of the countdown to tipoff, The Courier Journal set some over/under lines for the 2025-26 campaign.
• Cast your votes below, and we’ll circle back when the final buzzer sounds.

Pat Kelsey has Louisville basketball fans dreaming big again.

The Cardinals enter the 2025-26 season looking to reestablish themselves as perennial contenders after going 27-8 and finishing second in the ACC during Kelsey’s inaugural campaign. To do that, they must notch the program’s first NCAA Tournament win since 2017 — at the very least, considering the hype their roster is getting.

U of L, as of Sept. 2, ranked seventh in ESPN’s way-too-early top 25. In his latest update to the poll, national college hoops reporter Jeff Borzello predicted Kelsey’s team will reach the Final Four in Indianapolis. There’s a decent chance he won’t be alone in making that pick as we near the home stretch of the countdown to tipoff.

Only time will tell if Louisville’s five returners and seven newcomers can jell into a championship-caliber squad. For now, all Cards fans can do is contemplate the seemingly boundless potential while Kelsey & Co. prepare for an Oct. 24 exhibition against Kansas at the KFC Yum! Center.

While you wait, how about a game of Over/Under?

Below, you’ll find five lines set by The Courier Journal relating to U of L’s 2025-26 season. If you’re reading this online, there will also be polls accompanying each line for you to cast your vote for the over or the under. Print readers can email their picks to [email protected]. We’ll check back in at the end of the campaign to see how everyone did.

Voting closes at midnight on Oct. 24 — ahead of the aforementioned exhibition against the Jayhawks.

Over or under: 23 regular-season wins for Louisville basketball in 2025-26

Louisville finished the 2024-25 regular season with a 25-6 record, going 7-4 in nonconference play and 18-2 against ACC opponents. Kelsey may have a deeper roster than he did in Year 1, but the schedule didn’t get any easier.

More than half of the Cards’ 13 out-of-conference foes in 2025-26 cracked the top 75 of analytics guru Bart Torvik’s preseason rankings: Arkansas (16), Baylor (34), Cincinnati (32), Indiana (42), Kentucky (14), Memphis (73) and Tennessee (13). Three of those programs, the Razorbacks, Wildcats and Volunteers, advanced to the Sweet 16 or further in the 2025 NCAA Tournament.

The ACC reverted back to an 18-game slate but didn’t do U of L any favors by scheduling a home-and-home series against reigning champion Duke — fresh off a trip to the Final Four — in addition to road games against the other two programs that reached the semifinals of the conference tournament, Clemson and North Carolina. In theory, the rest of the league should be better, too; because it’s hard to get much worse than having nine members finish outside the top 100 of the NET, as was the case in 2024-25.

How’s this for a barometer test? Louisville will host UK on Nov. 11 at the Yum! Center in the earliest meeting ever between the archrivals. If the Cardinals can notch their first win in the series since 2020, I like the over’s chances here.

Over or under: 362 made 3s during Louisville basketball’s 2025-26 regular season

Louisville’s single-season record for made 3s is 361, which was set on 906 attempts during the 38-game 2004-05 campaign.

Can the Cards pass that mark before the postseason begins? Here’s the case for and against.

U of L averaged 28.5 attempts from beyond the arc (999 total, a single-season record for the program) in 2024-25. But it averaged only 9.4 makes (328 total) — for a 32.8% clip that was the second-lowest of Kelsey’s 13-year career as a head coach. It had 16 games where it made eight or fewer 3s but remained committed to the long-range approach, firing off an average of 26 attempts during those cold spells.

Only one Louisville player averaged two or more makes from distance in 2024-25: Reyne Smith (3.5), who’s back in Australia gearing up for his first season in the National Basketball League. To account for his absence, Kelsey signed a trio of sharpshooters from the NCAA transfer portal who combined to hit 273 on 653 attempts (41.8%) last season in Ryan Conwell, Isaac McKneely and Adrian Wooley. If the goal is averaging roughly 11.7 makes per game, that’s as strong of a foundation to build upon as you’ll find anywhere in Division I.

Where will the rest of the 3s come from? Five-star freshman point guard Mikel Brown Jr. is going to be a threat; as will J’Vonne Hadley, Aly Khalifa and Kobe Rodgers, who are all shooting 35% or better from deep for their careers. Look for Kasean Pryor and Khani Rooths to take a step forward on that front, as well, and for Sananda Fru to be given the green light more often than he was during his four seasons in Germany’s Basketball Bundesliga.

Kelsey has had only two teams make 350 or more 3s: 2023-24 at Charleston (368 for 1,072 in 35 games) and 2018-19 at Winthrop (362 for 957 in 30 games). Over the past three campaigns, his squads are averaging 348 makes on 1,041 attempts (33.4%).

Only 15 DI programs eclipsed 365 made 3s in 2024-25. On average, they needed 36 games to do it.

Over or under: 6.5 postseason games for Louisville basketball in 2025-26

Louisville played four postseason games in 2024-25: three in the ACC Tournament, after receiving its first double bye in the event since joining the conference in 2014, and one in the NCAA Tournament.

On paper, the Cards look like a team primed for another top-four finish in the league — meaning only two wins would stand between them and back-to-back trips to the tournament’s championship game. So this line boils down to whether or not you think they’re either due for an upset this go-around at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, North Carolina, or they’re sitting on a run to at least the Elite Eight.

Remember: Kelsey is 0-5 in March Madness.

Over or under: 5.5 double-digit scorers for Louisville basketball in 2025-26

Louisville’s 2025-26 roster features five players who were double-digit scorers against DI competition last season: Wooley (18.8), Conwell (16.5), McKneely (14.4), Hadley (12.2) and Pryor (12). Fru chipped in 12.4 points per game on 66.5% shooting during his final year in the BBL; and Brown, a projected lottery pick in the 2026 NBA Draft, was close to 30 as a senior at DME Academy.

Something’s got to give, right? That would be Kelsey’s plan for managing minutes in his up-tempo system, which will push everyone to be the most efficient version of themselves when their number is called.

During the coach’s winningest season to date, a 31-4 run at Charleston in 2022-23, he had nine players with minute shares of 37.8% or higher. Only five were double-digit scorers, and the highest average was 12.2. The following year, he had 10 playing 25% or more of the Cougars’ available minutes. Only three broke double digits — none more than 12.8.

These rotations are more in line with what we should see from the Cards in 2025-26, barring another bad case of the injury bug. With three players shouldering minute shares of 81.3% or more, U of L had five double-digit scorers in 2024-25. The next-closest player was James Scott at 7.1.

Over/under: 7.5 runs into the student section for Pat Kelsey in 2025-26

Kelsey was known for running into the student section to celebrate big wins at Charleston but waited until a Feb. 8 victory over Miami to visit The Ville’ns for the first time. The story goes he got called out by his mom for not doing so yet at Louisville during the buildup to that game.

“I always say, ‘Never delay gratitude,'” Kelsey told reporters afterwards. “I delayed gratitude a little too much.”

After breaking the seal, the coach made three more trips into the stands across the final four home games of the season, after wins over Pittsburgh and California on March 1 and 5, respectively, and after a senior day victory over Stanford on March 8. It begs the question: Will this become a staple at the Yum! Center in 2025-26?

The Cards have 17 home games booked for Year 2 of the Kelsey era. The biggest are shaping up to be: Duke, Kentucky, Memphis, N.C. State and Virginia — but, if the crowd consistently brings the noise, the coach may feel obligated to thank them early and often.

Reach Louisville men’s basketball reporter Brooks Holton at [email protected] and follow him on X at @brooksHolton.