The Pat Kelsey era begins on Monday night at the KFC Yum Center.
The first-year head coach at the University of Louisville will lead a new-look Cardinals team into the Yum Center for the season’s first exhibition game.
U of L will host Division II Young Harris College at 7:30 p.m. The Mountain Lions are from Young Harris, Ga., in the mountains of North Georgia, and compete in the Confernece Carolinas. Young Harris, who finished 17-12 overall and 11-7 in conference play last season, returns the entire starting lineup and has an experienced roster of 13 upperclassmen.
If there were a Las Vegas line, Louisville with 16 new members of the roster and an entirely new coaching staff would be heavily favored.
But Kelsey said the staff is not treating it that way.
“We’ll prepare for this exhibition like we were playing Duke,” Kelsey said last week during U of L’s media day. “It’s the most important game because it’s the next one.”
There’s a lot of hype and hope for Kelsey’s first team at Louisville.
Kelsey didn’t mention it but the fans sure remember that Louisville lost a game each of the past two exhibition seasons. Former head coach Kenny Payne saw his first team lose to Lenoir-Rhyne and then last year it was a loss to Kentucky Wesleyan that started the season’s downward spiral.
And he’s focused on making this team better one day at a time.
“You guys all want to talk about Tennessee, Arizona, Indiana, Kentucky, Duke, North Carolina,” he said. “I’m not worried about them now. I’m worried about our first exhibition game. So, we’ll prepare for them the same way we prepared for the games in the Bahamas, the way we attack their personnel, their style of play, the way we approach the game.
“That’s just the way we roll. That’s part of the process of the preseason is you find out more about your team as you go along.”
Louisville was impressive in its two exhibition games this summer in the Bahamas.
The Cardinals whipped the Bahamas Select team 111-59 and then decked the University of Calgary 111-71. Seven different players scored in double figures in the first game and five hit double-digits in the second game, with eight of the 11 scholarship players available hitting double figures in at least one game during the trip.
U of L started the same group – James Scott, Terrence Edwards, Kasean Pryor, Chucky Hepburn, and Aboubacar Traore – during those two games but Kelsey has said the staff could use a number of different lineups this season. It’s likely to change a few times throughout the season.
Kelsey said he’s not worried about starting.
“I’m not all that concerned with who starts and who doesn’t start,” Kelsey said. “It’s more who wins the game vs. who starts the game. It’ll fluctuate throughout the course of the year, and I couldn’t even tell you who’ll start in our first exhibition.”
Hired in late March to replace Kenny Payne, Kelsey said he’s excited to see his team on the floor.
“These guys were selected to fit what we’re about,” Kelsey said recently. “We’re going to be good. Mark that down, we’re going to be good.”
