LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- At this point, anyone who follows college basketball can read a schedule. You can see that Pat Kelsey's Louisville basketball team does not have a team in the national Top 25 in its path. Maybe even you can see that the Cardinals are projected to lose only one more game in the estimation of Ken Pomeroy's advanced metrics.

Kelsey sees the same things. There's a lot of back-patting going on when you win seven games in a row — especially in a program that hasn't done it in a while, even more in a program that won just 12 games the past two seasons.

Among the possible stumbling blocks ahead for the Cardinals is injury, just bad shooting nights, exemplary performances by opponents. But the biggest one, perhaps, is complacency, or overconfidence.

Seeing on social media how you've turned things around. Hearing fans grouse about how you're not ranked and should be. Those are dangerous mental obstacles to staying on the gas.

But Kelsey says he is impervious to those things. And by extension, he expects his players to be, too. With a Virginia team that Louisville already has beaten by 20 this season coming into the KFC Yum! Center on Saturday, Kelsey said his team was "a million percent" locked into its arena practice session Friday.

In fact, his media session started more than an hour late because the team's film session ran long — owing to the amount of input players themselves had.

"We have strung some wins together, and that's a very good thing for Louisville basketball, right?' Kelsey said. "It's good for the city. It's good for momentum. It's good for fan the base. It's good for our brand. It's good for recruiting. I get all that, you know. And it's for you guys (in the media) to talk about — you guys and fans to talk about and get excited about. It's going to put more butts in the seats. It's it has a ripple effect that's very positive.

"We don't talk about any of it and we don't think about any of it once we get into this building, and even when we're out of this building, it's just simply about having the best practice that we could possibly have. You know, the hope was to have the best one in the history of the program (on Friday), as I tell you all the time. I don't know whether it was or wasn't, but I can tell you, those guys were really locked in, and that's all we're worrying about."

It also helps, Kelsey acknowledged, that he has a coaching staff that is used to these conference runs. And he has a roster of players – many of whom played in last season's NCAA Tournament – who expect to win, and understand the challenges that come with winning.

The feeling might be experiencing a revival in Louisville, but it is not new for the vast majority of Louisville's players.

"It helps that we have a veteran team," Kelsey said. "And you mentioned my staff too, the best staff in the country. They do an unbelievable job on a daily basis, keeping our guys on task, both on the floor, off the floor, helping us, me, our team, to stay extremely consistent in the next thing that we do. And I know you guys probably are sick and tired of hearing that, but that (the next thing) is all we worry about."

In case you're wondering if that message is consistent throughout the roster, Chucky Hepburn took a question Friday, wondering if players think about whether their team should be ranked.

"No," was his answer. "We just take it one thing at a time. We know all that other stuff will come. If we just focus on what we've got to do on the court, off the court, and just make sure we're prepared for the next thing."

For Louisville, the next thing is going after win No. 8, at noon Saturday in the KFC Yum! Center.

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