What Pat Kelsey, Louisville Players Said After 106-59 Exhibition Win vs. Young Harris College

Read what the head coach of the Cardinals, center James Scott and guard Reyne Smith said after their exhibition win over the Mountain Lions:

Louisville men's basketball coach Pat Kelsey yells at the officiating in the the second half as the Cards easily defeated Young Harris College in the Louisville Cards' first exhibition game at the KFC Yum! Center in downtown Louisville, Ky. Oct. 21, 2024. / Matt Stone/Courier Journal/USA Today Network / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The Louisville men's basketball operated at a fast and furious pace in their exhibition opener against Division II foe Young Harris College, using a barrage of threes to come away with a 106-59 blowout win.

Here's what head coach Pat Kelsey, center James Scott and guard Reyne Smith had to say following the win:

Head Coach Pat Kelsey

(Opening Statement):

“First thing I want to say is that I want to thank Young Harris for coming to play. Jeremy (Currier) is a very good friend of mine. We kind of come from the same [coaching] tree a little bit. One of my mentors and his mentor is a guy named Dave Davis. Dave Davis was a great Division II coach at Pfeiffer (University) with a very, very innovative basketball mind.  He was the head coach at Newbury (College) for a long time. He coached with me at Charleston, my first year at the College of Charleston and then two years at Winthrop and was a part of several championship teams and was just a wonderful world class person. A lot of what we do philosophically comes from Dave Davis. A lot of what Jeremy does comes from Dave Davis. I want to make sure I acknowledged him because he has had an impact on our lives. Jeremy is a phenomenal coach and a brilliant guy. I want to acknowledge them first and foremost. I thought it was great to be out there with the lights on. I told Josh (Heird) that I have coached hundreds and hundreds of games as a head coach. I have coaches in a bunch of NCAA tournaments and things like that – this preparation today and these hours leading up to this game might be the most nervous I have been as a head coach. I am just being honest. It was the culmination of a crazy seven months or so. Just to be out there for the first time, standing out there on those sidelines was so nice. The ovation that we got when we came out was great. Our guys jumped on them from the tip and banged a bunch of threes in the first half. We played really hard and got us off to a great start.”

(About being nervous and dealing with nerves)

“My routine is that after shootaround I just basically go into a hole. The funny thing is you just get so accustomed to doing to what I have been doing for so long. I was totally out of sorts today. I was trying to figure out my new routine – where I am going to be, where I can be in private, where I can get a shower.  I turned the water on and it took 30 minutes for the shower to get hot. I found out the one next to it is the one that gets hot quicker. That is the stuff you don’t know. I usually get my pre-game meal after shootaround, but pre-game meal is at the Kueber Center not here at the KFC Yum! Center, so I was all messed up. My whole routine was messed up. I have a very good sense of how things will be next week. I really appreciate the guys here at the KFC Yum! Center, who busted their tails trying to get the water right in the locker room. They operate with excellence as does our administration as well.”

(About shooting 56 three-point shots)

“We don’t talk about shooting threes. Everybody talks about how we value three-point shots. I like three-point shots because they are efficient shot – points per shot. Our major focus is playing off the attack and threes kind of present themselves. If we touch the paint, attack the rim, put foul pressure on the defense and threes present themselves. Our guys gave up good for great. We always say we ‘are hunting great shots’ – that is getting to the free throw line, finishing at the rim and kicking for threes. I thought the guys played so selflessly for the majority of the game. We had 18 assists and one turnover at half and ended the game with 27 assists. We turned the ball over a little too much in the second half. We ran hard and made some space, and the guys made selfless plays finding open shooters and guys stepped up and knocked them down.”

(About the 18 to 1 ball movement in the first half)

“I thought the ball was popping. It starts with our transition and pace and how our guys sprinted to the corners and the floor was really open. I thought our pace was good. I thought we were really playing downhill and attacking the paint. You see a couple go in and the crowd gets into it which was awesome. Then they start flowing a little bit. Clearly, they were not as nervous as I was.”

(Defining the terms “kill” and “stop”):

“A lot of college programs utilize the ‘kill’ terminology. A kill is three stops in a row. A stop is a miss where you don’t foul on the possession and they don’t get an offensive rebound. You’ve got to get a stop, you’ve got to make them miss, they cannot get a second shot, and we can’t foul, and if you do that three times in a row, that equals a kill. The goal is to get seven kills in a game. It’s hard to do.”

(On normalcy of three-point tendency at Charleston and tonight):

“[It was] probably an aberration. They really packed it in. With Jeremy [Currier]’s philosophy, he was probably worried about a lot of stuff because we have a very talented offensive team. They were going under on a lot of pick and rolls and daring us to shoot behind them, and we stepped up and knocked those down. They were super help-oriented when we drove so the kicks were there. Our guys were simply doing what the game told them, and when they drew two and the help came, they sprayed it and got open shots. It was good. It looked like a connected offensive unit.” 

“Our offensive rebounding was good. I think we finished the game getting 42 percent of our misses, and I think we were 55 percent in the first half. The best in the country get around 39 percent, so our goal is always somewhere around there. It went down a bit in the second half.  thought we cleaned up our defensive rebounding in the second half. They finished at 30% but they were up in the mid-30s for most of the early second half. Those speak for physicality, they speak for toughness, and they speak to tenacity. Jeremy’s teams always play hard. I loved those two walk-ons at the end of the game putting their teeth on that loose ball over there in the corner. The bench just went nuts. That speaks to culture. Khani Rooths didn’t play well in the first half, but I heard his voice constantly throughout the game.”

“I loved the bench decorum and the bench culture today. When guys are coming out of the game there’s good GBT on the sideline. We call that ‘Great Basketball Talk’. I was a little mad at my man Spencer Legg, because when those guys went over and ate the loose ball, he didn’t run over and pick them up. That stuff drives me nuts. [Spencer]’s a big part of our team, he prepared with us every single day at Charleston. Great scout team guy. It all matters we are 25 strong. If it’s the last 30 seconds of the game and there’s a loose ball, I’m just thinking ‘eat it’, and that’s what Aidan and Cole did.”

(On defense limiting passing)

“Well, they are a phenomenal attacking, driving team. If you applied their stats to Division I, they would be number one in the country in free throw attempt per field goal attempt. So, number 35 (Carl Cleveland) had 187 free throws last year, number 20  (Cole Deptula) had 161, and number 12 (Karl Chavis) had 170 -- that’s off the charts. Jeremy (Currier) does a great job of putting them in isolation situations, and it’s hard to deal with. So, we talked about having them play in crowds, really guard the ball, and defend without fouling. In the first half we were great at it, they didn’t get in the bonus. There was a whistle in the last 30 seconds of the first half, and they had to do a sideline out-of-bounds. Proud of our guys for attention to detail on that. Then I thought we got a little careless in the second half and started fouling a little bit more. I think in the first half our ball pressure was good, which forced them maybe to go one-on-one more. I thought they were able to pepper the ball around a little bit more in the second half, and it allowed them to get a little bit more comfortable.”

(Terrence Edwards' threes and the crowd)

“It was awesome. I think the crowd really, really appreciated how we were playing. Guys were playing hard as heck, they were sharing the ball, they were banging shots, it was exciting. It was the first time I heard the Yum! roar. What do they call it in Augusta National? The Tiger roar? The Yum! roar, I’m down for it. I’m hoping to have plenty more as we move forward here, but that was a really cool moment.”

(On Reyne Smith)

“He’s a winner… cat’s a winner. People mistake him sometimes - Skip Prosser used to call them ‘suburban jump shooters’ - that's not Reyne. That’s his deal and shoots the blood out of the ball, but he’s tough as nails. He’s on every single scouting report. He’s exactly where he needs to be at all times. It’s almost like having another assistant coach. Just because he knows what we do and how to do it so well. He’s selfless, he’s a team dude. It’s a shame I only get to coach him for one more year, because he’s a joy.”

(On Kasean Pryor’s performance)

“I thought he did a good job. I thought he played well.”

Center James Scott and Guard Reyne Smith

(On if the field goal attempts for 3-points is a trend or a one off)

(Reyne Smith, Sr., G)
“I believe, it could kind of be a trend. We don’t really talk about how many threes were going to go out there and shoot. We just want to generate the best shot possible each possession, whether that’s a shot at the rim or a three-pointer. All the guys work really hard on shooting and shooting every single day, so someone’s open and catching the rhythm and letting them fly all the time. So, there’s a lot of confidence between everyone to shoot a lot of threes, but it’s not something we really talk about.”

(On working on shooting, staples to make yourself a better shooter)

(Reyne Smith, Sr., G)
“First we do skill sessions in the morning with coaches working on shooting and shooting in different ways, whether that’s on the move and just kind of working on shots out of actions we may run and getting extra work in outside of any team practices and stuff with the coaches. So there’s a responsibility on all of us. We call it 300/100 and that means just kind of get your work in every single day, outside of what we do as a team”

(Thought on being out there on the hardwood tonight)

(Reyne Smith, Sr., G)
“It was exciting. We’ve been going at it since June and we’ve had the games in the Bahamas, which was good but just been practicing every single day against one another, and just excited to be out there in front of fans and playing in the Yum Center for the first time was really exciting. I’m really looking forward to it.”

(On sharing the basketball and ball movement)

(Reyne Smith, Sr., G)
“Coach is always talking about just sharing the ball, and kind of less dribbles, throw [the ball] around, getting teams to closeout, attack those closeouts, and just be unselfish. Make the extra pass, and we do a really good job at that. The guys the coaches recruited [are] just a bunch of unselfish guys willing to throw that extra pass and give up a good shot for a great shot, and it’s a big emphasis for us to get the best shot possible every time. Guys have done a really good job buying into that.”

(On the comfortability of their big men’s ability to push the ball down the floor themselves)

James Scott, So., F
“This team, they just all feed you with confidence, like coaches emphasize whoever gets a rebound, just go, [because] we’re faster that way. The guards encourage the bigs to just push [the ball].”

(On if the players saw anything tonight that could trend for the rest of the season)

(Reyne Smith, Sr., G)
“There’s a lot of things we have got to tidy up obviously, it’s the first game we’ve played in front of fans we’re not going to be perfect, [we] made a lot of little mistakes that you just kind of get when you play a different opponent for the first time. But [in regard to] trends, just kind of the ball movement, throwing the extra pass, playing fast, so a lot of those things are kind of something we preach every day along with offensive rebounding.”

(Photo of Pat Kelsey: Matt Stone/Courier Journal/USA Today Network / USA TODAY NETWORK)

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