LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Pat Kelsey insists Saturday's game is neutral territory.
This is technically true in the same way that a Tex-Mex restaurant in Fort Worth is international cuisine.
Dickies Arena sits a comfortable drive from Baylor's campus in Waco, close enough for fans to attend without packing a toothbrush, far enough away to satisfy the legal definition of "elsewhere." In modern scheduling, neutrality is less a condition than a suggestion.
Kelsey shrugs at it. Geography, like hype, is not his department.
Louisville | Kentucky | Indiana | Eric Crawford
To him, Baylor is simply "the next opponent."
Not a brand name. Not a national champion with a Hall of Fame coach polishing his résumé in plain sight. Not a team whose efficiency numbers say contender while its record says something closer to survivor.
Just the next one.
This would be easier to accept if Baylor did not resemble a sports car with cosmetic damage. The Bears are 13–11 and 3–9 in the Big 12, which doesn’t sound like much trouble until you realize their last two losses came by three points at No. 5 Iowa State and five at home to No. 22  BYU. Baylor has spent the past two months losing to very good teams in ways that make everyone nervous.
They are not broken. They are dangerous.
"They have two, in my opinion, first-round NBA draft picks," Kelsey said. "That's unbelievably dangerous."
He also spent considerable time discussing Scott Drew, Baylor's coach, as a future Hall of Famer. Drew already owns a national championship and was widely viewed as a favorite in 2020 before the pandemic canceled the tournament.
Louisville arrives on a four-game winning streak, fresh off a performance against N.C. State that was more fireworks show than basketball game. Mikel Brown Jr. scored 45 points, Ryan Conwell added 31, and the Cardinals dismantled the Wolfpack with the kind of efficiency that makes opposing coaches turn off the film early.
"You're only as good as your next one," Kelsey said. "But I like how our guys responded to success the other day, having a big win and not changing, not blinking."
Baylor's real menace lies in its ability to turn missed shots into second chances. The Bears rebound offense the way some families collect antiques: aggressively and without apology.
Louisville demonstrated Monday that it can control the glass, holding N.C. State without an offensive rebound for much of the first half. Kelsey dismissed this as irrelevant history.
"That one's over," he said. "We're not going to keep these guys off the glass simply because we did a good job keeping N.C. State off the glass."
The game itself sits awkwardly in the season, neither conference nor postseason, like a tuxedo worn to a staff meeting. Louisville agreed to it last summer, when February still felt theoretical and everyone believed in the benevolence of scheduling.
Now it arrives on national television (ESPN, 4 p.m. ET), in a building filled with green and gold accents.
Kelsey refuses to be distracted by the novelty. He believes in process, repetition, and the quiet conviction that if you do the right things often enough, outcomes eventually run out of places to hide.
So, the narrative -- Baylor's record, the proximity, the occasion – does not concern him.
It's just the next game. Ask him yourself.
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