Pat Kelsey has shown he can win at Louisville, going a combined 51-19 in his first two seasons, with a pair of NCAA Tournament appearances.
Kelsey, however, has just one March Madness win, although he now might have the roster to change that.
The Cardinals, 11th in the preseason Associated Press poll and picked to finish third in the Atlantic Coast Conference behind Duke and Virginia, will open their season on Nov. 2 against visiting Chattanooga.
While many blue-blood basketball programs largely are built through high school recruiting, Louisville (24-11 last season) has committed hard to the transfer portal this offseason. Kelsey and his staff brought in just three freshmen compared with eight transfers.
That portal haul includes former Kansas center Flory Bidunga, the No. 1 player in this year’s portal class, per 247Sports; former Oregon point guard Jackson Shelstad (No. 18); and North Carolina guard transfer Seth Trimble (No. 24), who last week got a temporary injunction that makes him eligible this season.
Bidunga is a preseason first-team All-ACC selection after averaging 13.3 points, 9.0 rebounds and 2.6 blocks last season for the Jayhawks. He joins 7-foot-5 Southern California transfer Gabe Dynes and five-star 7-foot-2 freshman Obinna Ekezie Jr. to give Louisville some serious size, which Kelsey hopes will round out his team’s game.
“There’s no question that we are intentional this year as to how we built our roster, and there was an emphasis on defense and rebounding and improving our rim protection and our length and our overall physicality,” Kelsey said earlier this month at ACC media day.
“I think one of the hallmarks of our offensive teams the last two years is we’ve been elite shooting teams, and I think we still are a good, hopefully very good, shooting team. The length and athleticism that we added hopefully will make us an elite defensive and rebounding team as well.”
Shelstad, a second-team preseason All-ACC player, averaged at least 12.8 points in each of his three seasons at Oregon, along with a career-high 4.9 assists in 2025-26. He’ll be tasked with guiding an offense that replaces its top four scorers from last year, all of whom were guards.
Chattanooga enters the season looking for a bounce-back campaign after a surprising dip. The Mocs won 21 games in 2023-24 and a program-record-tying 29 — with an NIT championship — in 2024-25 before finishing last season with a 13-19 record, the program’s first losing season since 2018-19.
Mocs coach Dan Earl said injuries that sidelined four players for the entire season limited his team’s size and rebounding ability, but the problems went beyond that.
“The puzzle pieces didn’t fit last year,” Earl said during the Southern Conference’s media day. “We have to look in the mirror and figure out what we did wrong. We tried to correct it this year.”
Chattanooga was picked to finish fifth in the conference.
Tate Darner, a guard who was tasked with playing forward last season due to injuries, averaged 9.9 points and 4.4 rebounds a game as a freshman. He’s now back at his natural position and is the Mocs’ lone preseason All-SoCon player.
“Cerebral guy. Can make shots, crafty in getting downhill. Can read the defense, make the right play,” Earl said. “We’ve seen his confidence build, he’s gotten stronger, and we’re looking forward to him taking a big jump this year.”
–Field Level Media
