On May 15, Louisville men's basketball found itself in a place no one wants to be in this day and age.

The Cardinals were crowned the most underperforming high-major program in Evan Miyakawa's study of NCAA transfer portal production over the past five seasons.

Who is Miyakawa, you ask? He's the brains behind the formulas powering EvanMiya.com, an advanced analytics website dedicated to college hoops. It's popular with coaches, including Pat Kelsey and members of his U of L staff.

Kelsey & Co. have been subscribers for a few years, Miyakawa told The Courier Journal. They trust his data so much, in fact, that they contacted him for insight while putting the finishing touches on their 2024-25 roster.

Specifically, Miyakawa said, the Louisville coaches wanted to know how his projection for South Florida commit Kasean Pryor would change if they "completely removed" midrange jumpers from the 6-foot-10, 210-pound forward's arsenal.

Pryor converted those at a 38.5% (30 for 78) clip last season while shooting 58.3% (63 for 108) at the rim and 35.2% (37 for 105) from beyond the arc, per Hoop-Math.com. On EvanMiya, he ranks 236th out of the 1,914 players who entered the portal this offseason.

"My rough estimate (was), if he no longer took midrange shots, he would move up to be, like, a top-150 transfer," said Miyakawa, an Indianapolis native who holds a doctorate in statistics from Baylor. "Which would be kind of in the middle of where the other incoming transfers rank for Louisville."

This is where Miyakawa's study reenters the conversation. If Kelsey is to restore the Cards to national prominence, he must get the most out of his portal acquisitions — something, the numbers say, Kenny Payne and Chris Mack struggled to do.

That's certainly a nonnegotiable in Year 1, because U of L will have 10 transfers suiting up. Between the 2019-20 and the 2023-24 seasons, it brought in a total of 12 players through the portal.

Miyakawa is optimistic brighter days are ahead. Here's why.

Pat Kelsey and his staff have an eye for talent

A brief aside to explain the nucleus of EvanMiya, Bayesian Performance Rating (BPR):

• To generate it, Miyakawa uses advanced box-score metrics, play-by-play data and historical information. With it, he can quantify how effective a team or player is on both offense and defense.

• Take Purdue's Zach Edey, for example. The consensus National Player of the Year had the highest BPR in the country during the 2023-24 season, 11.60. His offensive BPR (OBPR) was 8.00, and his defensive BPR (DBPR) was 3.59.

• That means, if Edey were on the court with nine average DI players, his team would score eight more points per 100 possessions than average, would allow 3.59 fewer points per 100 possessions than average and would be expected to win a 100-possession game by nearly 12 points.

For his study, Miyakawa calculated average BPRs for every DI program's crop of transfers between 2019-24 using only data from players' first seasons upon arrival.

Louisville came in 72nd out of 82 high majors and finished dead last in expected transfer improvement (-0.57), which reflects how a player either overperforms or underperforms the portal rating he had coming in.

That's in the past, however; and Kelsey's time at Winthrop and Charleston offers hope for the future.

The Eagles (1.71) and Cougars (1.64) finished fourth and fifth, respectively, among programs that got the most production from non-DI transfers during the past five seasons. Armed with the Cards' resources, he and his staff don't need to lean on those players as heavily to fill a roster anymore.

"But the talent (identification) part, especially looking for guys coming from non-high-major programs, definitely bodes well for them," Miyakawa said, "being able to get guys who are maybe underrated by other programs and have them, specifically, not just be good players but good players in (their) system, knowing exactly what they need from them."

Pat Kelsey's first Louisville basketball transfer class ranks among EvanMiya's top five

Miyakawa considers Kelsey's inaugural Louisville transfer class to be the second best in the country. It trails only former Cards coach Rick Pitino's haul at St. John's.

To reach that conclusion, he generated BPR projections for the upcoming season using stats from each portal entrant's collegiate careers to this point and, when dealing with underclassmen, their high school recruiting profiles. He doesn't tweak the projections after players find new homes, because it can be "tricky" to determine whether — and how — their roles will change in new schemes.

Does U of L's spot in the top two have anything to do with the fact that Kelsey had all 13 scholarships to work with in the wake of Payne's ouster? Yes.

That's why Miyakawa places more stock in his Overall Transfer Activity Rank, which he said "really speaks to how much better" the Cards' incoming class is than the players they lost to the portal this offseason.

In that regard, they rank third — behind only Vanderbilt (No. 2) and the Red Storm (No. 1).

"It's a great measurement for seeing, 'Hey, you know, they could have landed anywhere on the spectrum, because they needed to reset,'" Miyakawa said. "Being in the top three is pretty good."

Here's a look at next year's BPR projections for scholarship players on Louisville's 2023-24 team, listed in order from least impactful to most impactful:

Compare that to the BPR projections for its 2024-25 roster, listed in order from least impactful to most impactful:

Here's what Miyakawa had to say about the four incoming transfers he's highest on:

Khalifa, who will redshirt this season to undergo surgery on his left knee: "He had a huge impact on BYU's offensive performance (in 2023-24) as a big they ran the ball through. He's arguably the best passing big in the country; so, if his knee was bothering him to the point where his scoring production was limited, I'm really excited to see what he's able to do after he recovers from that."

Hepburn, who started every game during his time at Wisconsin and made the Big Ten's All-Defensive Team last season: "His defensive projection (2.27) is a really big deal, because it's a lot harder to guarantee defensive solidarity in the portal; especially when, in this day and age, people focus so much on the offensive end. … Louisville is kind of getting him at a bargain right now; because, even though his scoring numbers took a slight dip this year, his overall impact metrics in terms of what he's bringing on the court per possession improved from the previous season. … I think he's going to be one of the most well-rounded point guards (coming out of) the portal."

Johnson, who was named the Pac-12's Sixth Man of the Year as a sophomore: "He was a four-star recruit out of high school, so part of why he's ranked pretty highly in my projections is because the data points to the fact that there's still some more untapped potential for him."

Hadley, who finished fourth on Colorado in scoring, and was the Buffaloes' second-best rebounder and facilitator, during his first season as a full-time starter at the DI level: "I'm really encouraged by what he did. The fact that (he) played that much (and) had a really solid statistical contribution as kind of a secondary player on a team that made the NCAA Tournament means that he's going to be one of the most surefire impact players."

Does a spot in EvanMiya's top five guarantee success?

Miyakawa's portal class rankings date back only to the 2022-23 season.

It's a small sample size, but here's a look at how the teams that finished among the top five in Overall Transfer Activity fared in 2023-24 and in 2022-23:

2023-24

1. Kansas: 23-11 (10-8 Big 12), lost in the second round of the NCAA Tournament

2. Ole Miss: 20-12 (7-11 SEC), failed to reach the NCAA Tournament

3. Kansas State: 19-15 (8-10 Big 12), lost in the first round of the National Invitation Tournament

4. Florida: 24-12 (11-7 SEC), lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament

5. Villanova: 18-16 (10-10 Big East), lost in the first round of the NIT

2022-23

1. Creighton: 24-13 (14-6 Big East), lost in the NCAA Tournament's Elite Eight

2. Illinois: 20-13 (11-9 Big Ten), lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament

3. Miami: 29-8 (15-5 ACC), lost in the NCAA Tournament's Final Four

4. Memphis: 26-9 (13-5 AAC), lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament

5. Butler: 14-18 (6-14 Big East), failed to reach the NCAA Tournament

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: Pat Kelsey transfer portal haul one of the best