What Pat Kelsey, Louisville Players Said After 99-54 Exhibition Win vs. Spalding

Read what the head coach of the Cardinals, forward Kasean Pryor and guard Koren Johnson said after their exhibition win over the Golden Eagles:

Matthew McGavic | Oct 28, 2024

Louisville head coach Pat Kelsey in the Cards' second exhibition game at the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, Kentucky Monday, Oct. 28, 2024. / Matt Stone/Courier Journal/USA Today Network / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

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Louisville Cardinals

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Wrapping up exhibition play with a matchup against local Division III foe Spalding, the Louisville men's basketball program notched another blowout victory, mainly using the area inside the perimeter to secure a 99-54 win.

Here's what head coach Pat Kelsey, forward Kasean Pryor and guard Koren Johnson had to say following the win:

Head Coach Pat Kelsey

(Opening Statement) "First, I would like to thank Spalding for coming to play us tonight. Obviously, they are an institution here in the city that we are proud of. I know the Grays, the coaches over there do a phenomenal job. They are very involved with the youth groups and basketball at the grass roots level in this area. They are proud Louisvillians. They are great assets to our community. They do a great job. They are well-coached. They had a good game plan tonight. They did their best to limit our three-point looks and forced us to drive the ball and I thought we responded well. We got to the free throw line 36 times. A few of you guys were asking me the other day about threes and is that what we want to do every night. No, we want to do what the defense tells us to do. I thought we exploited them in other areas. It is good to get these two exhibitions under our belts and play in the KFC Yum! Center in front of the crowd as a quote, unquote practice. But it is on for real Monday against Morehead State and we are very excited about next Monday."

(About Kasean Pryor’s play tonight and his dealing with the death of his former coach) “Coaching is a small fraternity, so we all know each other. We are all together in the spring and the summer. It is a tight-knit community. Sixteen years ago, I lost Coach (Skip) Prosser, who was my mentor, who died of a heart attack at the basketball office Wake Forest. When I got the news that Amir (Abdur-Rahim of South Florida) had passed away so to answer your question, I did know him, although we were not close friends or anything but man, he was a very, very respected coach in the coaching fraternity. He was a world class and a rising star in the business but he had such humility and such class and was a man of character. I am very blessed to coach Kasean because he is a fine young man. To hear the way that Kasean talked about Amir, tells you everything you need to know about what kind of teacher he was. We lost a great one – a great person, a great family man, a great coach and it is very sad. Kasean got to go back to the memorial service yesterday and got back late, late last night. We talk about the power of the unit all the time. It is based on the most powerful force in the universe – love. Our guys all put their arms around Kasean to help him mourn in this tough time. Kasean had a big night. Koren (Johnson) had a big night. I think it was Reyne (Smith) and Fat (Terrence Edwards, Jr.) had a big night the other night. I think one of the true strengths, in fact I know, is our depth. It is not like you can look at our roster in preparation and circle two names and say ‘those are the two guys that you have to stop’ because it could be two other guys the next night that have 26 and 20 points. That is a good thing. Koren was sensational. I love ball screens. I love when guards tilt the floor and look like a blur coming up the floor. He was an absolute blur. Those guys did a great job, in a lot of ways, of carrying us offensively.

(About defense and what can be built on) “If you play hard as heck, turn them over and we had a record number of deflections tonight, so our guys respected their opponent. We talk about having excellence in each possession and in four-minute breakdown and I thought our guys did that. We fouled too much. Some of that was being overzealous on the ball. They were a driving team. They had two assists on the night. By the end of the night, you have to give them credit, they pass, cut, pass, cut, pass, cut move. Then they picked the matchup and put their heads down and drove the ball. Sometimes when a team is so hellbent on driving with reckless abandon, it is hard not to foul. But to their credit, they did a good job of putting foul pressure on us. Some fouls that got us into the bonus and allowed them to get to the free throw line early were kind of careless or in some ways, hustle fouls. I don’t like dumb fouls. But hustle fouls I will take. We had several over the back on some offensive rebounding. I love offensive rebounding off free throws. But you can’t just push a guy in the back or go over his back. But loose ball fouls, diving after balls, I will take that all day long. Some of those we will have to clean up. If I had to say anything about tonight, I’d say we need to do a better job of keeping them off the free throw line. I think they got to the bonus at about the 12-minute mark in the second half.”

(On if there was an emphasis on playing in the paint) “No, that’s the way they were playing us, they watched the tape, we went 24-55 from three the other day. They were like [with] Reyne Smith we’re not letting him get any looks. You saw Reyne get in the paint, touch paint, got fouled, scored at the rim a couple of times. You take what the defense gives you. So instead of shooting 55 threes, we shot 24 of them, but we got to the free throw line 36 times. So, the threes present themself by playing downhill on the attack. But they were staying attached to shooters, so we did a good job at finishing at the rim.”

(On how organic the chemistry has been with this team)
“We have a selfless team, I think from the very beginning when we took the floor [for] the first time down in the Bahamas, people talked about [the chemistry], the way the ball moves and the way guys share the ball. I mean, 69 percent of our field goals were assisted on tonight. That’s high, high level, and sometimes when you get into a game like this, and you’re up by 40, or whatever it was, it’s easy to all of a sudden start going, ‘man I’m going to get mine’. But I really thought, from the 12-minute mark on, or at least probably the last 16 minutes of the second half, because in the first half, when we had some of those careless turnovers, we were trying to drive through two guys. If two guys play you, pass the ball. So, I thought we were trying to do a little too much and had some careless turnovers in the first half, but man, I thought, for that last 60 minutes we really, really shared the ball and played connected.”

(On what Kelsey likes about his team’s focus going into games) “What’s no secret is that as we move forward is that we’re going to play better teams, more talented teams, obviously Division 1 teams. We played those two teams in the Bahamas, and they had some professionals on them. We played a college team from Canada, and then we played two non-Division I [teams]. We knew that these four, kind of exhibitions, that they were all going to be against opponents that maybe don’t have the size, and length, and talent and things like that. I was a stickler on respecting our opponent, excellence in the process, excellence in the scouting process, having a seriousness of purpose of what you do. Because I said, ‘fellas, we’re going to come out of this game in 40 minutes, and I didn’t say we’re going to win, because there is no guarantee, but we have to come out of this game and have gotten better. We’ve got to grow from this game.’ There's a pretty good chance that we were going to have a lead in the second half, no guarantees, but when you get to that point, are you still sitting down and guarding, and [being] in your gaps, and executing your pick and roll coverage and sharing the ball and executing on offense? Because otherwise we’re wasting our time, we’re just out there getting some conditioning in or something like that. But, this group, even when we had big leads, continued to play the right way, so that I think when we get back to practice, we can say, ‘okay we took a step in that game’. Which is really really important as a team. We’ve got to continue to grow every game, every practice.”

(On building a rotation going into the regular season): “I’ll say it again, one of the great strengths of our team is our depth. We’ve had four different guys that have scored 20 points in the last two games, and again, it might be two other guys in the next game. It could be somebody else in the game after that. A strength of our team is our depth, that we can go deep into our roster and get major contributions from everybody. Again, it goes back to the foundational principle of the culture of our program, and it’s the power of the unit. There’s a bunch of guys in there that aren’t concerned with their playing time, with their minutes, with their rebounding totals. They’re concerned with winning, and it’s ‘what can I do to help the guy sitting next to me?’ Whether it’s a nine-man rotation, 10-man rotation, we’ve got a group of dudes in there that are about winning, and that’s why we have a chance to be really good.”

(On the offensive test against Spalding’s defense):“Yeah, I think it was good to play against a different style and philosophy offensively. You saw what Young Harris’ thing was with [their mentality], that 'we might be out-athleted, if that’s a word, so we’re really going to pack it in and dare them to shoot threes', and then we did that. These guys played us totally differently. They tried to run us off the three point line, so it was good to have to adapt to a different approach and a different strategy against us.”