LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- For the first time since 2021, the Louisville basketball program has won back-to-back exhibition games. Baby steps, Cardinal fans. Baby steps.

That is the public stance after Pat Kelsey's revamped Louisville team beat Calgary 111-71 on Thursday afternoon in its final game of the Baha Mar Classic in The Bahamas, averaging 111 points and 30 assists in two victories by an average of margin of 46 points.

"We're not going to throw parades because we dive for loose balls and crash the glass," Kelsey said after Thursday's win, in which the Cardinals rebounded half their own misses and got better than half their field goals on layups and dunks. "That's the expectation."

Later, he held up his cellphone and said, "I wish these things didn't exist and social media didn't exist, but it does. ... Guys are going to look at their phones, and people are going to be telling them that they're the '84 Lakers and the greatest thing since sliced bread and things like that. We're going to be really good. We're not good yet. We've got a long, long way to go."

Got it, coach. Not good yet. Sliced bread. No parades. Long way to go. Copy that.

But privately, maybe in their homes, maybe in their minds, maybe after closing the door and making sure no one is looking, Louisville fans have to be dancing little, hidden jigs all over the city. They are throwing up handfuls of invisible confetti and pounding their fists into the couch cushions.

Somewhere, they are whisper-screaming, "We're back!" And Jacori "Corito" Mozee, a dedicated Cardinal fan who passed away last April but always Tweeted, "We watching or nah?" before Louisville games, was definitely watching. And approving.

We all know, objectively, and without question, that these wins are exactly what their surface appearance would say they are – wins against not very good competition. Nobody is saying they weren't.

But if you've watched Louisville against not-very-good competition in the past couple of years, you know the context. If the words Arkansas State, Lenoir-Rhyne, Wright State, Appalachian State or Lipscomb mean anything to you, then you know what these first two exhibitions of the Pat Kelsey era really meant.

They were a loaf of bread to a bunch of people starving in the desert. They were a team that looked as if it knew how to follow a scouting report, and share the basketball, and make the extra pass, and maintain focus after getting a lead, and identify another team's hot hand and try to shut him down.

And when you haven't seen that for a while then, yes, it is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Kelsey didn't have any deep analysis after Thursday's win, which was against the better of the two teams Louisville faced. He wasn't quite ready to hand out any grades.

"I can't tell you right now," he said. "I mean, obviously, there was a lot of possessions with unbelievable effort of pursuing the ball. But whether you get it or not, you're graded on your effort of pursuing the ball. And it's hard to say right now whether we were to our standard or not. ... Once I finally watch the tape — but I haven't left my room since we got here and I'm going to be on the water slide in about 24 minutes with my son — I'm going to find out a way to rent a jet ski and we're going to go out."

And that's all right. Because he has already, by all appearances, helped get Louisville basketball back into another gear.

That he locked himself in his room for three days to make sure nothing was left to chance for a couple of meaningless island exhibitions shows that he well understood – there's no such thing as meaningless in his job right now.

It doesn't mean Louisville is going to roll through anything. But it does mean they made the right first impression.

South Florida transfer Kasean Praor led the Cardinals with 20 points on 6-8 shooting Thursday. Koren Johnson added 15 and Terrence Edwards Jr. had 14. J'Vonne Hadley finished with 13 points and 8 rebounds. Noah Waterman, playing for the first time after missing the Bahamas opener, had 10 points.

Of Louisville's 37 field goals, 20 were layups or dunks and 12 were three-pointers.

In two games in The Bahamas, Louisville averaged 80.5 possessions. A year ago, they averaged just a fraction under 70.

"We've been together close to eight weeks, and it's been a joy coaching them," Kelsey said of his team. "I'm going to quote Winston Churchill. This is the end of the beginning. The last eight weeks have been a lot for our guys. They showed up on June 5 and didn't know anybody from anybody and worked their tails off in the weight room, on the court and off the court, to grow closer together and start this journey in a positive way. And I couldn't be prouder of this group for that. . . . I think we've got a chance to be good. But we've got a long way to go."

In Louisville, low-key optimism is fine. It beats no optimism at all. People here can tell you.

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