Two keys for Pat Kelsey as he looks to restore Louisville basketball program
Joe Schoenfeld has had a front-row seat to Pat Kelsey's coaching evolution.
Schoenfeld saw the makings of a good one when Kelsey joined his Elder High School boys basketball team as a senior and helped lead the Panthers to Ohio's Division I state championship in 1993.
His belief was further solidified five years later, when Kelsey joined his staff after wrapping up his collegiate career at Xavier. Now, he's the one taking notes when he sits in on his former point guard's practices.
"He has a way of communicating a vision about a program that everybody can gravitate to and believe in what he's got," Schoenfeld told The Courier Journal on Wednesday. "There's really nothing, I don't think, that he can't do coaching-wise."
Kelsey's biggest test yet begins Thursday, when the 48-year-old Cincinnati native will be formally named head coach of the Louisville men's basketball team after spending the last three years at Charleston.
He inherits a program that, after going 12-52 across two seasons under Kenny Payne, is desperate for a return to national prominence. And something needs to be done about attendance after the Cardinals averaged just 6,504 scanned tickets per game between 2022-24.
The following tasks should be Nos. 1 and 2 on Kelsey's to-do list upon being handed the reins to one of the sport's most-storied programs:
Winning the transfer portal
The road to U of L's first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2019 begins at the NCAA transfer portal.
As of Wednesday afternoon, all but two of the Cards' scholarship players had entered it. And they aren't alone.
There's tons of talent waiting to find new homes — for the right name, image and likeness (NIL) compensation, of course. And Louisville, considering its multimillion-dollar resources, should be one of the best equipped to reel it in.
How Kelsey chooses to build his roster is up to him. But he needs to make a splash in the portal sooner rather than later.
That could mean convincing players from U of L's 2023-24 squad, such as junior forward Brandon Huntley-Hatfield, to stick around. It could also entail getting Charleston's leading scorer, junior guard Reyne Smith, to follow him to the 502.
Kelsey certainly has the recruiting chops to make it happen. Although he's spent the past 12 seasons at mid-major programs, he was vital in luring future NBA players such as Al-Farouq Aminu, James Johnson, Ishmael Smith and Jeff Teague to Wake Forest as an assistant from 2004-09.
If he finds similar success here, it will make Step 2 on his to-do list much easier.
Winning over the fan base
The search that led athletics director Josh Heird to Kelsey was a bumpy one.
As C.L. Brown pointed out Wednesday in a column for The Courier Journal, everyone knows he was, "at best," the third choice behind Baylor's Scott Drew and Florida Atlantic's (now Michigan's) Dusty May.
The easiest way to leave that in the past, of course, is winning games; but Kelsey can't until the 2024-25 season rolls around.
Until then, he must stack victories with a fan base that's grown fractured from debating Payne's fate, and who should be named his successor, since the doldrums of a 4-28 2022-23 campaign.
It's doable; just watch a video of Kelsey taking to the streets of Charleston in January to promote one of the Cougars' home games. He is, in the words of his former high school coach, a master salesman.
"The big picture of basketball and marketing and promoting and getting people excited about something, I think he's just off the charts when it comes to that," Schoenfeld said.
"He could probably be the world's best — you pick whatever product you're selling; if he wanted to go into sales and just do that entirely, he'd be an executive someplace real fast. He's just outstanding."
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: Pat Kelsey to Louisville basketball: 2 keys to restore storied program
