Five Takeaways from Louisville's Summer Foreign Trip to The Bahamas

The Cardinals played a pair of exhibition games in the Baha Mar Hoops Summer League.

Louisville guard Koren Johnson in the Baha Mar Hoops Summer League / University of Louisville Athletics

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - College basketball doesn't officially return for another few months, but we got our first look at what a Pat Kelsey-coached Louisville men's basketball team looks like.

Earlier this week, the Cardinals made their way down to The Bahamas for a pair of summer exhibition games in the Baha Mar Hoops Summer League. The captured a 111-59 win over Bahamas Select in their opener, then followed that up with a 111-71 victory against the University of Calgary.

While there is bound to be an overreaction or two considering the competition wasn't the strongest, there was plenty to take away from the summer foreign tou. With that in mind, here are five of our biggest takeaways from Louisville's time in The Bahamas:

Louisville's passing ability was phenomenal.

Admittedly, this takeaway probably is influenced by the fact that we saw nothing but offensive stagnation under the previous regime. But after watching just 5-10 minutes of on-court time, something became abundantly clear: Louisville is a very proficient passing team.

No matter who was on the floor, no matter what lineup was being used, Louisville passed the ball with regularity. It seemed they were always one or two steps ahead when it comes to calculating what moves to make, and not concentrating solely on getting making individual plays. They routinely - as Pat Kelsey said - passed up good shots for great shots, and the box score reflected this.

In their first game against Bahamas Select, Louisville posted an insane 38 assists on 43 made field goals. While those numbers came down when they took on a tougher opponent in Calgary, they still had 22 assists on 37 made shots.

"We're gonna obviously play against much, much better defenses, but it's just- it would have been so easy just for guys to start going one-on-one," Kelsey said after the game against Bahamas Select. "It was just so, so good to see the sharing of the ball."

Kasean Pryor could be the X-Factor.

When looking at Louisville's roster during the middle of the summer, one which has 13 scholarship newcomers (12 of which are transfers), there were plenty of opportunities for someone to take a step forward and become "the guy." While it's still very early and the Cardinals still have the preseason to go through, it seems that Kasean Pryor has the inside track to be "the guy."

The 6-foot-10, 210-pound transfer forward from USF got off to blazing hot starts in both games, scoring nine points in the first 2:19 against Bahamas Select and 10 points in the first 3:02 against Calgary. His 20 points vs. the Dinos led the team, as did his 38 combined points across both games.

He was a threat on the perimeter during his time in The Bahamas, played well around the rim both as a scorer and rebounder, and was able to showcase his defensive versatility and efficiency as well. On a team chock full of impact players, Pryor could be the one who winds up being Louisville's X-Factor during the 2024-25 season.

My expectation is for Kasean to play like a big time player, because I think he is one," Kelsey said after the Calgary game. "Got us off to a great start yesterday, he's had a really good summer, he's grown in a lot of ways. He's going to be a major piece for our team."

The tempo was furious and the substitutions came at a breakneck pace.

One thing that was anticipated was coming when Louisville went down to The Bahamas was that Pat Kelsey was going to push the pace and substitute like mad. Kelsey-led teams have been one of the most up tempo squads in college basketball, and he has routinely substituted players on and off the court at a much higher rate than most college coaches do.

It might have been just a pair of exhibition games, but Kelsey's M.O. was clear and present. On top of passing constantly, the players - both on and off the ball - were constantly moving around in an effort to create space for the next ball handler. On defense, switches came regularly in both zone and man defenses, and communication was always present.

Additionally, Kelsey did in fact pull guys on and off the floor any chance he could in order to maintain this pace. The most minutes a player saw the floor was 23 (Koren Johnson and Reyne Smith in game one), and in both games, eight players played at least 18 minutes.

"It was good," Kelsey said after the Bahamas Select game when asked what he thought about seeing his guy play at his fast pace for the first time. "We obviously play at a very fast pace. Huge part of our system is our offensive rebounding, and both of those require great effort. Because of that, it's important to have depth, and be able to play a lot of guys to be able to play to that standard as much as possible."

The three ball will indeed be a huge emphasis.

Within Kelsey's five-out system, the three-point shot was a major facet of his offenses at both Charleston and Winthrop. On top of that, most of the players that he recruited for his first team at Louisville do have upper-tier shooting ability.

Put that all together, and the Cardinals let it fly from deep in the Baha Mar Hoops Summer League. They shot a blistering 20-of-47 on three-point attempts against Bahamas Select, then followed that up with a 12-of-31 effort from deep against Calgary. Across both games, the Cardinals shot 41.0 percent on threes, and 50 percent of their total attempts were threes.

"When the lights came on, it was good to see us make shots," Kelsey said. "Obviously, we value shooting. We spend a lot of time on our shooting. Had a ton of open looks."

On top of Louisville shooting its fair share of three's Kelsey's modern approach to basketball, a.k.a. - take no midrange shots - was on full display as well. In fact, just 34 of their 156 shot attempt were not layups or threes.

Louisville has a plethora of team-wide maturity.

Because Kelsey and his staff had to place a heavy emphasis on the transfer portal when it comes to roster construction for this team, as a byproduct, Louisville is loaded with experience. Eight of the 13 scholarship players are entering their final year of eligibility, and all but two have at least two years of college experience.

The team's overall maturity level was on full display down the stretch. Playing against competition that was clearly outmatched, it would have been easy for Louisville to take their foot off the gas, or for individual players to focus on padding their stats. But instead, the Cardinals continued to play hard on both ends until the final horn like it was the regular season, and no one opted to play hero ball.

"Regardless of the score, we really stressed to the guys to try to be great in our system," Kelsey said. "Just to have kind of a 0-0 mentality at the end of every media timeout. I thought they did that the other day when we got up a lot, and I thought they did today. That's hard to do. Human nature seeps in, you can just relax. 'Hey, we're up by a lot. We're gonna win anyway,' and they didn't do that.

"We made some mistakes down the stretch. Got lazy around the rim, missed scouting report assignments on a shoot first guy. But I just squint my eyes a couple of times, and I was like, 'Man, we're flying around like a bunch of dogs.' In a game in the summer when we're up by 40. That was good to see. Everything is an opportunity to improve and to get better. If we would have just wasted those last eight minutes and said, 'Hey, let's just get to the end of this game, and let's go out to the beach and have a good time,' we won't have a chance to get better. But those guys, they're mature. I think that's one of the strengths of our team."

(Photo of Koren Johnson via University of Louisville Athletics)

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