CRAWFORD | Louisville expected to hire Charleston's Pat Kelsey as basketball coach

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The University of Louisville is expected to hire College of Charleston's Pat Kelsey as head basketball coach, according to sources close to the search. The news was first reported by Jeff Goodman of Fieldof68.

Final contract discussions have concluded, according to sources, though a deal has not been signed and the school has made no announcement. Kelsey has been to back-to-back NCAA Tournaments and three in the past four years, dating back to the end of his tenure at Winthrop.

A disciple of former Louisville head coach Chris Mack former Louisville assistant Dino Gaudio, Kelsey will take over a storied Louisville program badly in need of rebuilding, both on the court and in reputation.

The 48-year-old Cincinnati native was a standout at Elder High School there and played point guard at Xavier for Skip Prosser from 1995-98 after playing a season at Wyoming for former IU player Joby Wright.

He got into coaching as an assistant at his old high school, then joined Prosser, and later Gaudio’s, staff at Wake Forest. He was associate head coach to Chris Mack at Xavier from 2009-11 before taking the head coaching job at Winthrop in 2012.

Kelsey has a record of 261-122 over 12 college seasons.

At Charleston, after going 17-15 in a rebuild season, he guided the Cougars to a 31-4 record and an NCAA Tournament berth in his second year. They finished 27-8 this year and returned to the NCAA Tournament, where they suffered a first-round loss to 109-96 loss to Alabama.

Kelsey has twice been a finalist for the Skip Prosser Man of the Year Award and, after the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, gave a speech at Ohio State that was so impassioned that a family of one of the victims reached out to him. He later ran in a triathlon in the family’s honor, and honored the family at a 2014 Winthrop game in which each of his players wore the name of a victim on their jersey.

In 2017, Kelsey was named the coach at UMass and was in Amherst for the news conference when he changed his mind, informing school officials that he would not take the job. In a statement later, Kelsey said, "For personal reasons, I have asked the University of Massachusetts to allow me to be released from the offer I accepted to be the head men's basketball coach. To be clear, this decision is entirely personal and in no way an assessment of the commitment UMass made to me personally or to the resources available at UMass to have a nationally-recognized program."

Kelsey posted a couple of 12-loss seasons after returning to Winthrop before going 24-10 in the 2020 season, when the NCAA Tournament was canceled. A year later, they went 23-2 and to the NCAA Tournament. He was hired by College of Charleston the next season.

"Pat Kelsey is the real deal," Mack said in an endorsement of his former assistant when hired at Charleston.

Mack called him, "the most energetic and passionate coach in the country."

ESPN's Jay Bilas called Kelsey, "a great coach. He is an energetic teacher, recruiter, strategist, and he is a principled leader. Pat is demanding and encouraging and puts each player in a position to be successful. Players don’t just play for Pat Kelsey, he works tirelessly for his players."

THIS STORY WILL BE UPDATED.