CRAWFORD | Brown expected back, Pryor out for Louisville's ACC opener at Cal

PASADENA, Calif. (WDRB) -- Louisville basketball coach Pat Kelsey, it would appear, got his point guard back for Christmas. Mikel Brown made a full return to practice on Sunday and is listed as "probable" for Louisville's ACC opener at California on Tuesday night in Berkeley.

Point guard Kobe Rodgers also returned from a concussion to practice this week, though the ACC's new injury reporting system for men's basketball ruled Kasean Pryor out for the game.

If you think it's strange that an ACC opener is in California, you're not alone. Louisville will begin its ACC slate in a 92-year-old gymnasium just 2,308 miles from home and less than two miles from the Pacific Ocean.

You couldn't make sense of conference realignment geography with Apple Maps doing double shifts.

But none of that changes the importance of the season's second beginning for Kelsey and his No. 16-ranked Cardinals.

The long road trip isn't ideal. ACC teams struggled with it last season. The Cardinals will face Cal on Tuesday at 9 p.m. Eastern and will stay on the west coast for Stanford on Saturday. They arrived in California on Sunday.

But Kelsey isn't looking for sympathy. He's looking for closeouts. And box-outs. And toughness, just like he was before the Christmas break. Losing Pryor doesn't necessarily help that effort.

"We never make excuses or give explanations in our program," Kelsey said. "Whether we're playing in Berkeley, California, or on the surface of the moon."

(Though on the moon, the whole zero g issue would mess with effective field goal percentage.)

So this is how Louisville begins its ACC season. Deep in Pac-12 country, which now is a ghost town where only Cal and Stanford still haunt the halls. But make no mistake, Cal is no cardboard cutout.

The Golden Bears are 12-1 and old enough to rent a car without the insurance waiver. "They scare me in a lot of ways," Kelsey admitted, a sentence you don't often hear from him.

He describes Cal as fast in transition, skilled in the post, and full of guards who can "touch the paint and put foul pressure on you." Which is coach-speak for: They can make you look like you're defending with salad tongs. Their best win was an 80-72 win over UCLA more than a month ago.

Louisville, meanwhile, spent the holiday break sharpening the "meat and potatoes" of its system. Kelsey, ever the chef, used the time to reheat the core principles — closeouts, effort, rotations — until they sizzled. There are no shortcuts in his kitchen.

But if there's one thing he believes in, it's the value of the long view.

"We always say the season's a lifetime," Kelsey said. "It's ups and downs. Babies are born, people die. There's adversity, there's triumphs, there's all type of stuff. But it's really important to stay present where you are, and that's being here in California right now, getting ready for a really good Cal team, not worrying about what's happened in the past, not worrying about what's going to happen in the next game, or the game after that when we get back."

Louisville is 10-2. The Cards are semi-healthy again. They've shown flashes. Now comes the conference gauntlet, with a start that could knock a compass off its axis.

Berkeley's calling. The ACC begins. Louisville has lost just one ACC regular-season game in 2025. In a strange place for an ACC opener, they can both finish, and start, on a high note.