An amusement park on the border of North Carolina and South Carolina holds a special place in the friendship between Louisville men's basketball head coach Pat Kelsey and his longest-tenured assistant, Brian Kloman.

It was Kelsey's idea. Ten years ago, with Kloman less than a week into a job on his staff at Winthrop, he suggested they take their children to Carowinds for a playdate.

"Funny story: He walks up to me with his kids, and I'd kind of lost mine for a second," Kloman said. "So we had to both find them."

Otherwise, the day went off without a hitch; so much so that, as it was coming to an end, Kelsey invited Kloman's two daughters over to his house for a sleepover. It's a gesture Kloman will never forget, because they've been family ever since.

"The rest is history," he said. "I knew, from that point on, he gets it, he gets me and he's more than a basketball coach."

The feeling is mutual.

"He knows what I'm thinking before I'm thinking," Kelsey said.

Together, Kelsey and Kloman have compiled a 227-92 record, six regular-season conference championships and four NCAA Tournament appearances. In March, they embarked on the biggest test of their careers: leaving Charleston to revive one of the sport's most storied programs after it hit historic new lows under former coach Kenny Payne.

Kelsey had one of his core tenets, "POWER OF THE UNIT," inscribed on a wall inside the Planet Fitness Kueber Center upon arrival. Having lived and breathed the culture longer than anyone in the building, Kloman is tasked with being one of its top stalwarts for, but not a carbon copy of, his spark plug of a boss.

"He'll challenge you in a way that's different from PK," said Chandler Vaudrin, who played for the duo at Winthrop from 2018-21. "You can feel the personality, the relationship-building that elite assistant coaches have to have. He's really good at that."

It comes natural to Kloman, a coach's son from Asheville, North Carolina, but he can hardly believe he's made it this far.

Now that he's here: "I never want to leave," he said.

The grind

Kelsey and his wife, Lisa, hosting Kloman's daughters for a sleepover after their trip to Carowinds was so impactful to him because he was once in their shoes.

His father, Chris Ferguson, spent 30 years in the coaching ranks — at UNC Asheville, Appalachian State, Virginia Tech, Tennessee, East Carolina, Oklahoma State and Charlotte. That meant lots of moving and always being the new kid in town; but it also made Kloman adaptable and taught him the importance of cultivating friendships at every stop.

"As long as you stay in touch with those people," he said, "it's unbelievable."

Sports were often the common denominator during Kloman's travels; but, when it came to basketball, he wasn't much of a player. And yet, he couldn't get enough of studying film with his dad and left his bedroom door cracked so he could fall asleep listening to him make recruiting calls.

Ferguson urged his son to consider different career paths, noting the toll the profession can take on quality time with family, but Kloman was already in too deep. Step 1 was serving as a student assistant with the Volunteers, then in a player development position, while earning his college diploma across 7 ½ years in Knoxville.

Upon leaving UT in 2005, the grind kicked into another gear. Kloman started as a volunteer on Happy Osborne's staff at Georgetown College; then went from Pfeiffer University in Misenheimer, North Carolina, to Daniel Webster College in Nashua, New Hampshire, and back to the Bluegrass State for a stint at Pikeville College under Kelly Wells.

"I learned my work ethic from that," he said. "You've got to drive everywhere; you've got to do the laundry. (If) you do that for nine years, you become really humble."

After the birth of his first daughter, Kloman left coaching to pursue more lucrative job opportunities but couldn't shake it entirely. So, in 2008, he and one of his former Pfeiffer players, fellow Louisville assistant Thomas Carr, started a website called RecruitingRumors.com. With the bonds he formed scouring grassroot circuits for talent, and his father's ties across Division I, the service took off among coaches hungry for intel.

That's how he met Kelsey.

The connection

Warren Gillis was a promising young guard from Philadelphia during the late 2000s. Kloman got the drop on him early and thought he'd do well playing for Chris Mack at Xavier.

Kloman said he and Carr had "an affinity" for working with the Musketeers through Mario Mercurio, a longtime friend of his on the staff. Mercurio connected him with Kelsey, one of Mack's assistants, to discuss the possible target.

Xavier ultimately passed on Gillis, who went on to a successful career at Coastal Carolina, but Kelsey earned Kloman's respect with his approach to process.

"You feel his energy," Kloman said. "... The kid loved him, because Pat was honest with him. Pat recruited him really hard; and still, to this day, they have a relationship."

It took less than a year for Kloman's recruiting service to earn him his first DI job offer, at North Carolina Central. After a season there, he spent two at Tennessee Tech before Kelsey came calling about a vacancy at Winthrop, left by Louisville native Brian Thornton, who's now the commissioner of the Western Athletic Conference.

Kloman didn't need much convincing.

"I'd known from the first time I met him he was special (and) he was a Hall of Fame coach," he said. "I just wanted to sit on his coattails … and just try not to mess up."

The investment

Before landing at Winthrop, Kloman said he felt boxed in.

As a minority coach — his father is Black, and his mother, Mary, is white — he said he was often labeled as solely a recruiter at previous stops.

"I accepted the box," he said. "I was cool with it; because I'm a role guy — whatever needs to happen."

Kelsey expected more, starting with a list of responsibilities he gave Kloman heading into his first offseason on his staff. Kloman told him he didn't have much experience with the X's-and-O's-centric tasks; to which Kelsey replied: "Well, you're going to learn."

"We started having coaches clinics on the floor and running over strategies," Kloman said. "He (was) showing me, step by step, how he wants his scouts to look.

"... It takes time to do that. He's a Division I head coach. He hires a guy; and he says, 'I'm investing in you. You're not just investing in me.' He invested in me as a coach (and) as a person, and I'm forever grateful for that."

A few years later, when Kelsey wanted to create coordinator positions on his staff, Kloman was handed the reins of the defense. It's not an easy job, considering the breakneck pace with which their teams are known for playing offensively, but Kloman said Kelsey offered some advice early on that simplified things: "Just make sure our effort's good."

"He polices it extremely well," said Vaudrin, who as a redshirt senior at Winthrop in 2020-21 was named the Big South Conference's Player of the Year. "If you bring effort, (he's) going to bring a good scheme."

What sets Kloman apart, Vaudrin said, is his ability to bridge the gap between Kelsey and players. Because, in his opinion, "You can't be best friends with your head coach." Don't get him wrong: Their values and standards are the same; but in Kloman, Vaudrin said, guys have a straight-shooting confidant who allows them to be themselves in ways they can't with Kelsey while he deals with overseeing the entire program.

The word Vaudrin used most frequently to describe Kelsey's staff as a whole: family. The best example he had of it on display was when he tore his ACL in 2021, while playing for the Cleveland Cavaliers during the NBA summer league.

Kloman, he said, was one of the first people to give him a call afterward and told him to move to Charleston to do his rehab. Vaudrin did, and Kelsey had him on the bench serving as an honorary assistant during his first season with the Cougars.

"I was going through a really hard time," Vaudrin said, "and those people saved me."

The Ferrari

Kloman's oldest daughter went to Louisville with Kelsey and his family to watch his introductory news conference.

Kloman watched from his car in Charleston, because he and the rest of the staff had already set up a "command center" — where they called everyone from players' pastors to barbers — to work the NCAA transfer portal. When Kelsey wrapped up a nonstop Day 1, he said, they all met via Zoom and strategized their next moves until about 2 a.m.

"We knew this opportunity — it's not like a regular car," Kloman said. "It's like a Ferrari. You better get in; and you better drive fast."

They've hardly let off the gas.

Across their first four months in the 502, Kelsey and his staff have built a roster from scratch that Kloman believes will be their best yet defensively, scheduled a two-game exhibition tour of the Bahamas and even starred in a sci-fi short film called "Operation ReviVILLE."

Kloman said he drew inspiration from actor Danny McBride when it was time to deliver his one line, "The portal's open, sir." If you thought the production was corny, well, that's exactly what they were going for.

"You can't be too cool in our program," Kloman said. "We say, 'Too cool gets you beat.' (We're) just accepting everybody for who they are."

To his point, Kelsey's authenticity has played well with fans thus far. The Cards' name, image and likeness collective raised $2 million in 17 days to help build his 2024-25 roster; while season ticket sales have been on an uptick. And remember: This is after he emerged as an unknown to some, and made jokes about being the third choice, in the search for Payne's successor.

Kloman knew all along his boss would be a perfect fit in this hoops-crazed city; and to follow him here is a dream come true. He's tried to pay it forward by spending more than two hours talking ball with fans on X, formerly Twitter, and coordinating a video featuring Terrence Edwards Jr. and Reyne Smith for one supporter in particular who's undergoing chemotherapy. Because that's what family does.

"I don't want to let anybody down," he said. "I want to make every single person in Louisville proud; and I think we all are fighting for that.

"It's going to erupt in the Yum! Center; and, when it does, it's going to send chills down my spine."

Reach Louisville men's basketball reporter Brooks Holton at bholton@gannett.com and follow him on X at @brooksHolton.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville basketball staff: Pat Kelsey, Brian Kloman share close bond