CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WDRB) – It’s Louisville vs. Duke for the ACC Tournament championship Saturday night, and if you thought you’d be reading those words this season you’re either an optimist without equal or a prognosticator without peer.
That’s the story. It’s Louisville, it’s Duke, it’s postseason basketball. It’s Pervis Ellison beating Jay Bilas. It’s the Boom Boys, putting aside the grief over Kevin Ware’s injury to power through to the Final Four. It’s Dickie V courtside at the Spectrum Center, baby.
And now it’s Pat Kelsey, winner of 27 games in his first season at Louisville, breaking the first-year record of 26 by Denny Crum. First coach at the school to reach the ACC final. It’s his Louisville team, made up of guys who knew little about Louisville and even less about each other 12 months ago. It’s a group that improved on last season’s win total by 19 games, and perhaps counting.
It's Louisville vs. Duke, and it’s, no, not unreal. It’s very real. It’s unbelievable, yet you can believe it. Let’s just call it amazing.
“It's been a whirlwind of a year,” Kelsey said. “It's coming up on 12 months since Josh Heard made that call to me and offered me the job to be head coach at the University of Louisville, and when I still say those words, I still can't believe it's real sometimes, and I get goosebumps on my arm. Listen, I've said this at my press conference and I've said it a million times -- this brand, that cardinal head there, it's one of the greatest brands in collegiate sports, and I'm fortunate to be the head coach here. I thank God every day for this amazing opportunity. . . .
“That group of young men in that locker room is special,” Kelsey continued. “I've never had a team that has the seriousness of purpose every day in preparation like they do. You can see the caliber of competitors and dogs that they are when things get hot in big moments. They're taking me on this ride with them. It's a player-led team with phenomenal leadership. . . . I'm fortunate and blessed. We're excited about the opportunity to compete with Duke for a championship.”
Once you get here, nobody cares how you got here. Nobody cares that you put on a clinic on how not to close out a basketball game in the final two minutes against Clemson’s full-court pressure in a 76-73 win. You know why? Because Louisville’s entire season has been a clinic on how to close out basketball games.
Louisville has gone into the final five minutes of 27 games with a lead. Its record in those is 27-0. These guys have been closers.
Maybe it’s time to notice that Louisville tossed aside a Clemson team ranked No. 10 in the nation to build a 15-point second-half lead despite not having its fastball on offense, or its top three-point shooter.
Maybe it’s worth noting that Louisville beat Clemson despite being outscored by eight in the paint or three on second-chance points or by three in points off turnovers.
The analytics won’t like those numbers and, sure enough, as I look, Louisville beat a higher-ranked team in the Ken Pomeroy metrics and moved up a modest two spots while the team it beat also rose a spot. Such is the life of a mathematician.
There was nothing cold and calculating about this game.
In the locker room after the game, Kelsey told his players, “That was as physical a game as I’ve ever coached in.”
To reporters, he said, “From the very beginning, it was established early on how the game was going to go and how it was going to be called, and both teams accepted that challenge.”
At the beginning of the season, all the talk was about Kelsey’s fast-paced offensive attack and the three-point volume and Louisville’s ability to put up points. As injuries mounted, the talk had to change.
Louisville had to win with defense. It had to win with grit. It had to build its attack on three players – Chucky Hepburn, Terrence Edwards and J’Vonne Hadley – who get into the lane and score, even though you know they’re coming. They have a wonderful playground ability to get the ball to the rim, and a tremendous seasoning and experience to know what to do with it once they get there.
On Friday night, Edwards did it for 21 points – despite going 1-for-9 from three-point range. Hadley added 20. Hepburn finished with 12 points and had six steals.
“The evolution has been amazing to see, and our guys are bought in,” Hadley said. “That's the big piece right there. Our guys are bought in. It starts with our defense. After the Eastern Kentucky game, we sat down in the film room and, obviously, we set goals, and we met them, and now we're trying to exceed them. It all starts on the defensive end. It only makes our offense better when our defense is humming and moving around and being physical and disrupting and us being us.”
Kelsey knew he was getting guys who were experienced, competitive and tough. He knew the “back of the bubble gum cards.” Even he didn’t realize the degree to which these players would buy into his vision, and the program’s past, and each other’s success.
“You've got to recruit toughness,” Kelsey said. “It's hard to coach that or teach that. You either have it or you don't, in my opinion. Or you don't have the time to teach it if it is possible to teach it. We go to great lengths to try to do our research and talk to as many people as possible to -- we want great competitors and guys with great toughness, and you could see today we've got a team full of them.”
There was that finish. It almost overshadowed the remarkable accomplishment of the night. Almost.
Clemson scored 17 points in the game’s final 3:13. Louisville had six turnovers in that span. Clemson scored off all of them – except for the last one. On that one, Louisville blocked a shot, grabbed the rebound, and preserved its win.
Asked what the Cardinals can do about those problems, Kelsey jumped in to answer.
“Handle it better,” he said. “You give them credit; they were desperate at that point of the game, and they were -- the officials let stuff go at that point of the game, and the traps were ferocious. We made some ill-advised plays and could have handled some situations better, but we work on those situations every single day. We sure as heck don't make any excuses, and we don't give any explanations, but our guys were low on fumes there at the end of the game. At the end of the day, they gritted out a tough win, and fortunate to advance, and (if) we're in those situations tomorrow, we'll handle it better.”
Duke is a whole new challenge. The No. 1 team in the nation. Louisville didn’t back down from the Blue Devils when they met on Dec. 8. The Cardinals had lost back-to-back games. They were still adjusting to the loss of Kasean Pryor.
“We were the same team,” Hepburn said. “But we were still learning ourselves.”
Louisville landed one of the largest punches of the season against Duke. It got up by 14 in the first half. But ACC Player of the Year Cooper Flagg scored 13 of his 20 points in the second half, and Louisville couldn’t finish the deal. Flagg is not expected to play Saturday. Louisville is without Reyne Smith.
“I would say we found our identity on the defensive end,” Hadley said, when asked about the biggest difference between Louisville now and then. “Like I said, when our defense is humming, buzzing around and disrupting and us being us, we're an athletic, versatile team that can disrupt at all five positions. When we're doing that and we're locked in, we're a hard team to beat.”
So, it should be said, is Duke. The Blue Devils have lost only to Kentucky, Kansas and Clemson all season.
“We're playing the No. 1 team in the country,” Kelsey said. “They have -- I know No. 2 (Flagg) is out from what I understand. But when I looked the other day, and I'm starting to prepare and get my stuff all together for who we could potentially play, you look at some of these things online, and they have like five guys that are supposed to get drafted in the first round, first two rounds or something like that. It's like Noah's Ark; they have two of everything. Biggest thing we've got to improve on right now is our guys getting to sleep, our guys getting some rest, recovering our bodies, hydrating like crazy. Coaches will pour over film all night. We'll try to be short and sweet with our preparation tomorrow and have a smile on our face and be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when the ball goes up tomorrow at Duke.”
Louisville’s 11-game winning streak is the second-longest in the Power 5. Duke’s 10-game streak is the third longest. Kelsey has won eight straight tournament games.
Line them up. Tip it off. Louisville’s venture into wonderful improbability continues.
Copyright 2025 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
