Notebook: Pat Kelsey and Louisville Players on Summer Practice, Upcoming Season and More

This offseason hasn't been nearly as chaotic for the Louisville men's basketball program as the last one, but it has been an eventful one.

Not long after the Cardinals' season ended back in March, head coach Pat Kelsey and his staff got to work on roster construction for year two at the helm. While Louisville did lose eight players to graduation and the portal, Kelsey and Co. were able to supplant those departures with several talented portal, high school and international additions.

On Wednesday, Kelsey and a few players spoke to the local media for the first time since the end of the 2024-25 season. They answered a plethora of questions regarding the newcomers, the returners, how the program has improved overall since last season, and more.

While there were a plethora of nuggets from the over hour-long press conference, below are some of the more significant takeaways:

Early chemistry already starting to form between the newcomers and returners.

While the bulk of Louisville's 2025-26 roster has been on campus for most of the summer, they've only been together in totality as a team for roughly two weeks. Two of their three international prospects in the 2025 class didn't arrive on campus until earlier this month, while Mikel Brown Jr. has been away for the last few weeks 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. Primarily because character plays a big role in the recruiting process.

"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."

Just five players return from last year's squad, and of this quintet, only J'Vonne Hadley and Khani Rooths were able to play a fully healthy season - or play at all. That being said, this group of five brings to the table what UofL didn't have last year: returning veterans.

"It's always good to have that veteran leadership, to have those guys that have been through it," Kelsey said. "That know how we rock, that know how we practice, know our terminology, and they can help the other guys. That's been very, very helpful."

This core is infused with three transfer newcomers (Virginia's Isaac McKneely, Xavier's Ryan Conwell and Kennesaw State's Adrian Wooley), three international additions (Mouhamed Sananda Fru and Evangelos Zougris) and one high school prospect (Brown). Regardless of when they finally set foot on campus, these seven newcomers have demonstrated a willingness to both learn and get acclimated to their new home.

"it's not easy for to go into a new program right away, and ultimately get used to the culture, the way that the system works, and everything like that," Hadley said. "I feel like everybody that's transferred in, newcomers, international guys, have done a really good job of trying to understand. Whether that's watching film, just trying to understand the system a little bit better, and that's going to go a long way."

Louisville isn't getting crushed by the weight of expectations.

On paper, Louisville has the pieces to be one of the best teams in the entire country. For starters, Hadley and fellow returner Kasean Pryor - who both opted to take advantage of the Diego Pavia ruling and return for one final year - were among the team's best scorers and rebounders last season.

On top of that, all three portal newcomers were top-25 transfers in the cycle, Brown is a five-star prospect who was one of the best high school players in the nation last season, and two of the their international pickups - Fru and Camara - are four-star recruits. 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.

But if you ask Kelsey, he doesn't feel the pressure at all. 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. "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."

Some may view this as a laissez-faire attitude, but Kelsey has long been adamant of instilling a culture in which his team is not worried about the big picture at hand. 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 powerhose like Louisville. The team knows they have the potential to make some serious noise this winter, 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."

Kelsey wanted to send a message with their non-conference scheduling.

When it came to constructing their non-conference schedule for the upcoming 2025-26 season, Kelsey took the Denny Crum approach and loaded up on as many quality teams as he could.

Louisville is set to face Indiana, Cincinnati and Baylor for neutral site matchups, host Memphis, and will travel to Tennessee for the second leg of their home-and-home that started last season. Not to mention they'll be playing the annual rivalry game vs. Kentucky, at Arkansas for the ACC/SEC Challenge, and hosting Kansas for an exhibition.

Part of this was based on the tried and true "iron sharpens iron" cliche, but Kelsey's main reason for scheduling hard was for the sake of their NCAA Tournament resume.

Last season, the Cardinals hosted UT and Ole Miss, and faced both IU and West Virginia in the Battle 4 Atlantis, so it's not like they didn't have hard teams on their schedule. But because of the perceived weakness of the ACC, despite putting together a resume worthy of a top-five seed, UofL earned a No. 8 seed.

However their non-conference schedule shakes out, Kelsey wants it to be known to the NCAA Tournament's selection committee that they were not trying to avoid playing tough teams.

"What I do want to do is make sure that when we get there and the selection committee is looking at us, they know one thing: Louisville didn't duck the smoke. They didn't duck the smoke," he said. "That was our approach this year.

"How it all plays out, I don't know. Coach Prosser, if he was in my office right now and we were talking scheduling, he'd probably hit me upside the head and go, 'What the crap are you doing?' and maybe he's right. But we're not ducking the smoke. We're not.

"When it gets to that point with the committee, and they're looking at the seed of Louisville, it's not going to be like the caliber of teams they play weren't right. We ain't dealing with that. You can't sharpen your teeth eating oatmeal. Whether it ends up being the best strategy in the world, I don't know, but that's what we decided. Bring it."

Aly Khalifa and Kobe Rodgers are ready to contribute following redshirt seasons.

Two of Louisville's returners, Aly Khalifa and Kobe Rodgers, have yet to play a single minute for the Cardinals. Khalifa redshirted last year to rehab a nagging knee injury from his time at BYU that required surgery, while Rodgers also redshirted after tearing his ACL in the 2024 NCAA Tournament at Charleston.

During the 2024-25 season, the two leaned on each other during their respective rehab processes, and are both ready to ball out for their final seasons in college.

"We had two pretty bad knee injuries," Rodgers said. "While you're being out, while you're sitting out, it's not fun. But you know that at the end of the journey, it's going to be well worth it. I feel better than I ever have, and I know he's feeling better than he has ever have. Now we're just excited to get on the floor and show what we can do."

For Khalifa, it's been an eventful offseason. During his rehab process, he lost nearly 50 pounds, and is in the best physical shape of his life. Additionally, he learned in April that the NCAA was denying his eligibility waiver to play this season, but later won his appeal late last month.

The 7-foot, 250-pound center is already one of the best passing big men in college hoops, averaged 4.0 assists to just 1.1 turnovers per game during the 2023-24 season, on top of 5.7 points and 3.7 rebounds. Now, he's ready to find out how much better he can be following his transformative rehab.

"I feel like, defensively, I'm able to jump ball screens or drop ball screens, and hedge dudes down low and try and block them out and be stronger," Khalifa. "I feel like this is the biggest thing I'm excited for, it's what I've been working on this whole time. I also feel like I can shoot it a lot better too since the last time I played two years ago."

As excited as fans are for Brown as the lead guard, Rodgers has a lot of potential at point guard as well. During his last on-court season in 2023-24, he averaged 9.7 points, 4.6 rebounds, 2.2 assists and 1.2 steals per game, while also shooting 50.0 percent from the field and 45.0 percent on three-point tries. As someone who has been with Rodgers for three years now, Kelsey says that the guard is also looking the best he ever has.

"He's quicker, stronger, more athletic than he's ever been," Kelsey said of Rodgers. "Kobe is represents everything we want our program to be about. If the ball is bouncing, you open the door in the Kueber Center, Kobe Rodgers is in there. We got a program full of guys like that. That's being 'hoop dudes.' It's what we celebrate all the time. He's playing as well as he ever has in his career, he's a phenomenal leader. We're relying on Kobe big time this year to be really, really good for us."

Kasean Pryor's rehabilitation is on track.

Early last season, the Cardinals suffered a massive blow when Kasean Pryor tore his left ACL against Oklahoma on Nov. 29. The South Florida transfer entered the 2024-25 season as one of Louisville's top expected players, and ended the year averaging 12.0 points and 6.1 rebounds per game.

Like with Hadley, Pryor had the opportunity to return for the 2025-26 season because of the Diego Pavia ruling, to which he took advantage of. While his rehab process is still ongoing, he hasn't run into any snags, and is actually ahead of schedule.

"From a medical standpoint, he's on pace, probably even ahead of schedule," Pryor said. "You'd have to talk to Kate (Creznic) about that. But that's typically a 9-12 month thing, and he's exactly where he needs to be. ... She's doing an unbelievable job with him, and he's busting his tail."

While he hasn't run into any setbacks, he's still not a slam dunk to be able to play in their preseason exhibitions, or even the 2025-26 season opener. As far as when he will get to return to action, they're going to play it by ear, and not try and rush him.

"Typically around the nine month mark is usually when you start to get to progression of full contact ... We're hoping some time in the preseason he can practice before a game starts, but we'll have to just see how that how that plays out."

Adding a 13th and final player seems very unlikely.

While Louisville already has a loaded roster, they technically have space for another player. 13 scholarship players is the limit in college basketball, and the Cardinals have filled 12 of them.

Kelsey and Co. had recently kicked the tires on potentially bringing in another player, reportedly getting involved with Croatian forward Ivan Bogdanovic. However, while Kelsey didn't completely rule out filling that final spot, it seems very unlikely at this juncture.

"For all intents and purposes, for this year, our roster is set," he said. "You never say never, you never know what's going to happen, but where our roster is is where it's going to be."