Five Takeaways from Pat Kelsey's Introductory Presser

Kelsey was introduced as the next head coach of the Louisville men's basketball program on Thursday.

New Louisville basketball head coach Pat Kelsey made remarks during his announcement at the Planet / Sam Upshaw Jr./Courier Journal / USA

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Pat Kelsey is officially the next man to lead the Louisville men's basketball program.

The ULAA Board of Directors formally approved his contract Thursday afternoon, and was subsequently introduced as the Cardinals' head coach at the Plant Fitness Kueber Center.

"Man, look at this," Kelsey said. "Look at the passion that this fan base has. ... One of the most historic, tradition rich programs in the history of college basketball. You just feel it. You step off that airplane, you walk down the street, Card Nation is everywhere."

Here are five of our takeaways from his introductory press conference:

Kelsey very clearly checks Josh Heird's two biggest boxes.

Not long after Kenny Payne was officially fired, Louisville athletic director Josh Heird very plainly laid out what he wanted out of the Cardinals' next head coach: He wanted someone who was willing to "crawl" here to get the job, and one who also understood the magnitude of the job.

In retrospect, Payne never checked either of these boxes. He stated in his introductory press conference how he had to be convinced to take the gig, and it was evident from the jump that severely underestimated what comes with being the UofL men's basketball head coach. It seemed that Chris Mack never fully understood that, either.

Well, Kelsey didn't waste time in his introductory press conference letting fans know that he checks both boxes. Before delving into his now-viral dream story, he made sure there was no doubts about his interest regarding the Louisville job.

"Last couple of nights, I didn't sleep really well. I wanted that call. I wanted to be here bad," he said.

As for the second box, Kelsey didn't take much longer to check that one off as well. While he's only been in the city of Louisville for roughly 24 hours, he already seems to grasp just how enormous the job is, and how rabidly passionate the fanbase is.

"I'm standing at the podium and was just named the head coach where expectations, because tradition says it is, is ultimately getting to Final Fours and competing for national championships," he said. "That's the pinnacle, that's the highest level, it doesn't get any higher than this. ... It as rabid and excited as a fan base as you're going to find anywhere. It's the highest level, with high expectations. I'm fortunate to be here, and I'm excited to get started."

Kelsey is ready to win right away.

All throughout Kenny Payne's tenure as the head coach, whenever he would ask about the direction of the program and why it wasn't on a positive trajectory, Payne would regularly shift blame to what he inherited. In his final press conference, he went as far to say that the program was "broken."

While Payne did take over a program currently under an NCAA investigation, what Kelsey is inheriting isn't much better. Of course, Louisville has gone just 12-52 over the last two seasons, and the majority of the players from the 2023-24 season are already in the transfer portal.

Despite all that, Kelsey says he is ready to win immediately.

"If you don't plan on winning, don't put your shoes on," he said. "No offense, I'm not trying to mean, I'm just being honest. That's how I'm wired. It may not be the right thing to say at a press conference, and you're trying to build this thing, and they won 12 games over the last two years. I don't know how to play any other way."

In fact, when asked about Payne's comments about the program being "broken," Kelsey only doubled down on his "win now" sentiment.

"Ready to rock. Let's go." he said. "I mean that was in the past, what's happening out in the future. We all know where we want to go. Everybody in this room knows where we want to go. Right? It's about getting to work and getting after it. The next thing.”

He is confident in his ability to recruit at the high-major level.

One question that many in the Louisville fanbase have had regarding Kelsey is his ability to recruit. Because of Winthrop and Charleston's status as mid-majors, he hasn't been able to recruit some of the more higher-profile prospects that the Cardinals are used to. In fact, he's only ever landed two recruits with a 247Sports profile during his time as a head coach.

That all being said., Kelsey is extremely confident in his recruiting capabilities.

"You want to know if I can recruit? Meet my wife Lisa," he said. "I'm just praying that she doesn't hit the transfer portal. The good news, I was her third choice and that worked out really well."

In all seriousness, Kelsey actually does have some experience power conference recruiting experience. During his time as an assistant at Wake Forest in the early-to-mid 2000's, he played a role in recruiting several high-profile prospects - including McDonald's All-American and future NBA All-Star Chris Paul.

"I was at Wake Forest in the ACC for eight years, and we won multiple ACC Championships and recruited multiple McDonald's All-Americans. I was involved in the recruitment of Chris Paul. Not saying I was the lead recruiter, but I was involved in that. ... I've worked my whole life for this. Whatever Malcolm Gladwell says with '10,000 hours,' multiply that times four. Here we go, let's get after."

Kelsey is not one to shy away from the modern collegiate athletics landscape.

In this era of collegiate athletics, one dominated by the transfer portal and name, image and likeness, it is critically important that programs in all sports adapt to modern times or risk getting left behind.

Louisville has been at the forefront of this changing landscape, with the 502 Circle being one of the top NIL collectives in all of college athletics. However, Kenny Payne seemed averse to want to embrace these changes, not wanting to place a heavy emphasis on the portal and not utilizing the NIL funds at his disposal.

However, Kelsey has the exact opposite approach. In fact, when NIL and the transfer portal both started to take off a couple years ago, he wanted to make sure that Charleston got involved on that front.

"We ran at it," he said. "We're going to use this as a catalyst to make it an advantage, and use it to springboard our program to more championships and NCAA Tournaments. You have to. Because if you're gonna 'woe is me,' and you're gonna fight it, you need to do something else. It will be my same approach here.

"Obviously, this athletic department, this administration is unbelievably forward thinking, creative, getting out in front of all of it, and have done a great job building that infrastructure. I'm excited about staying getting involved in in even pushing it higher."

He intends to carry over his frenetic style of play over to Louisville.

The primary calling card of a Pat Kelsey-coached team is that they play extremely fast. In his last nine seasons, the only team of his to not crack the top-50 in KenPom's adjusted tempo metric was this season - when they finished 51st. Four Kelsey teams have cracked the top-20, with his first Charleston squad in 2021-22 finishing with the second-fastest tempo in college basketball.

While it remains to be seen if this frenetic style of play will be 100 percent successful at a place like Louisville, Kelsey isn't going to budge on his style. He's even going to make sure that, in the recruiting and scouting process, he finds ACC-caliber players that fit his system.

"We are fast paced, or usually in the top tier of college basketball in terms of number of possessions in our game, but a big part of our philosophy is, it sounds really, really simple, but it's true. The highest percentage shots in the game, we want the most of those.

"I'm not going to sit here and give out all my secrets to everybody out there, but there's a way that we generate those shots, and there's a certain type of player that we look for specifically from a metric standpoint that kind of fits what we do in a lot of different areas, position by position, but it applies well to our system.

"Now besides those metrics, as I said, there's five intangibles that we also evaluate. It doesn't matter how talented you are, you have to fit these things in terms of stuff that you can't measure, one of
them being toughness, and I won’t give you the rest of them, because again, we want to keep our secrets
here.”

(Photo of Pat Kelsey: Sam Upshaw Jr. - Courier Journal / USA)

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