LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- You can swim in Pat Kelsey's coaching resume and find answers or questions, reasons to high five or reasons to shrug.
Winning season after winning season? You bet.
If, as several outlets have reported, Kelsey will be named the University of Louisville men's basketball coach Thursday at a scheduled 3 p.m. news conference, he will be chasing his 12th consecutive winning season.
"That's nearly impossible to do, I don't care where you are," ESPN basketball analyst Fran Fraschilla said.
No magical highlights from March?
Kelsey's next victory in the NCAA Tournament will be his first victory in the NCAA Tournament. He's taken four teams to the party: two No. 12 seeds and two No. 13 seeds
Don't look for YouTube highlights of a signature upset. They don't exist.
His four NCAA Tournament teams teams were dispatched by an average margin of 10 points, including a 109-96 first-round loss to Alabama last Friday.
For a Louisville fan base that started this process of recruiting the replacement for Kenny Payne with daydreams of an NCAA Tournament winning coach like Scott Drew of Baylor or maybe a Final Four coach like Dusty May of Florida Atlantic, getting Kelsey might feel like getting roller skates when you expected a sports car. Settling is the verb I've heard from a few people.
I get it. Kelsey has been available since last Friday night. His credentials do not match the credentials that Chris Mack brought here from Xavier or Rick Pitino carried from the NBA and Kentucky.
The reality is that Louisville athletic director Josh Heird landed (at best) his third choice and perhaps his fourth or fifth. The search lasted two weeks, long enough that Bob Huggins had time to stump for the job despite the baggage that cost him his job at West Virginia last year.
Consider it the latest confirmation of the unsettled state of Louisville basketball. This stuff has been going on for years: three straight losing seasons, jarringly small crowds that no longer filled half the KFC Yum! Center, no committed recruits and a string of players in the transfer portal.
There's a fracture in the fan base among the former players about what the program needs to do to fix things. Fans checked out on Payne long ago.
But as a former Louisville player as well as the program's first permanent Black head coach, Payne had supporters who are upset Payne was not given more support — in the stands and from the administration. Expect some to step away from the program — financially and physically.
Those are all items awaiting on Kelsey's plate.
But Kelsey won 31 games at Charleston in 2023 and 27 this season. Those were the best seasons for that program since 2009.
He needed only two seasons to start winning at Winthrop, which lost 37 of 62 games before Kelsey arrived and has won only half of its games in the last two seasons with Kelsey gone.
Remember: He's been a one-bid league guy. His teams have won five of 12 conference tournaments, three in nine seasons at Winthrop, two in the last three seasons at the College of Charleston.
A reputation as a tireless worker and teacher?
It's here.
"I really like him," said basketball analyst Will Perdue. "He's a firecracker. No Red Bull necessary."
With his high school ties to Cincinnati and college ties to Xavier, the knee jerk comparison for Kelsey is to former U of L (and Xavier) coach Chris Mack. But people who know Kelsey are more likely to compare him to another former Xavier coach.
"He's more like (the late) Skip Prosser than Chris," Fraschilla said. "He's a whirlwind. Aside from getting a good coach, Louisville is getting a guy who can energize the fan base with his passion. With no drama and no NCAA investigations."
No experience as a head coach above the one-bid league, above the Big South or Coastal Athletic?
That's another question about Kelsey. He will turn 49 on May 15. His last experience working in the Power Six conference level shark tank was in 2012, when he served as Mack's associate head coach at Xavier.
But he was in the middle of the action 20 years ago at Wake Forest when Prosser and Dino Gaudio recruited guys like Chris Paul, Ishmael Smith, Jeff Teague and James Johnson.
"Let's be honest," Perdue said. "In recruiting, it's no longer about facilities or tradition or what conference you're playing in.
"It's about transactions (Name/Image/Likeness financial deals). That's what it is. That's the bottom line. It's no longer, 'What can you do for my son?' It's What can you do for us (my family).'"
That's some necessary straight talk from Perdue, who played at Vanderbilt before starting his 13-season NBA career that connected him with players and coaches with experience across the basketball universe.
Perdue remains invested in the game by working on the Chicago Bulls network as well as college basketball games on the radio. Kelsey's success will also depend upon Louisville's ability to fund its NIL collectives.
That will be a job for Kelsey, Heird and the rest of the Louisville athletic department. Perdue and Fraschilla both believe that Kelsey will bring the energy to win the press conference, which should generate an early buy-in.
After that?
"You've got to win games," Perdue said.
And if does that, it won't matter if Kelsey isn't Drew, May or anybody else on Louisville's list.
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