What Louisville Men’s Basketball HC Pat Kelsey Said After 111-71 Win Against Calgary

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The Louisville men’s basketball team closed out their Baha Mar Hoops Summer League season with a stunning performance against Calgary, winning the exhibition game 111-71.

Here’s what head coach Pat Kelsey had to say after the win:

(Pick up line)

I sound like I’m trying to be clever when I say this, but I’m going to quote Winston Churchill. He said something about, this is kind of the end of the beginning. It’s not the end, of course, it’s the end of the beginning.

What I mean by that is the last eight weeks have been a lot for our guys. They showed up on June 5th, didn’t know anybody, and worked their butts off every single day. In the weight room, on the field, off the field, to bond and share in a positive way. I couldn’t be more proud of this group for that.

It’s been a long, long four months. I say long, sometimes I feel like it’s gone by like a whirlwind. But from the time Josh (Heird) called me and offered me the head coaching job at the University of Louisville to now, it’s been a blur to say the least. I give my staff a lot of credit for the work they’ve done. Building this roster, recruiting like crazy, leaving their families behind while we did all of this.

As this first chapter comes to a close, it’s important for our boys to get away from me, and probably each other. Refresh their minds and bodies. Some of the boys still have some academic stuff to finish, of course. But then to recharge when we return in a few weeks for the start of fall, and to go full steam ahead into the next chapter.

I appreciate the board for letting us take this trip. A lot of people have done a lot in regards to it, whether it’s the donors, the fans, people who contribute to NIL, specifically with this game. Chris Brown and L&N Credit Union have really stepped up with the sponsorship of some of the things they’ve done with Floyd Street Media. It’s hard to name just one, but I’ll specifically mention Chris because of today’s game. But there’s so many people who have given us the wind in our backs, who have continued to support us. We’re all new. I’m new, my staff is new, all of our players are new, and the city of Louisville has embraced this team. We appreciate that. We have a great, great fan base that’s passionate. I was talking to a woman last night, she was telling us how excited she was. She was excited to see us play, and she said, ‘Man, do you have the size inside?’ Man over there, woman over there, 100-year-old grandma, everybody knows their home basketball court in their city, and that’s one of the things that makes it special. I’m happy to be here. I know our guys are excited to represent this great city and university for the next six or seven months.

(On Skip Prosser’s influence and his thoughts on the fanbase’s passion)

Coach Prosser is a huge influence in my life. Obviously, we lost him almost 17 years ago, almost exactly. Everything I do every day, so many of the things I do every day and say are things I learned from him. I think that’s how people’s legacies live on. A guy like Skip Prosser was a phenomenal coach, and mentor and teacher are things I teach our guys. Like “never delay grateful,” one of Skip Prosser’s favorite quotes. And I mention his name because I want them to know the source, and I want his name and his legacy to continue.

Our fan base is special. There are so many college towns in the country, this is a college town. That’s no disrespect to the (Louisville) Bats and the (Louisville City FC/Racing Louisville FC) football team. … In this city, the biggest, brightest spotlight is on Louisville and Louisville basketball. That’s one of the things that makes this job, this opportunity, Louisville basketball, great. It’s the biggest fan base in the country. They had 15,000 people at a TBT game. Chris Paul is an investor in TBT, and he was there the other day to talk about it. He was talking about how crazy the fans are. Crazy in a good way, how passionate. It was one of his first trips to Louisville, and he was blown away. Kudos to our incredible fans.

(On Kasean Pryor’s hot start, and whether he expects to become an X-Factor)

I expect Kasean to play like a big player, because I think he is. He got us off to a great start yesterday, he’s had a really good summer, he’s grown in a lot of ways. He’s going to be a big part of our team.

(On the versatility of Aboubacar Traore and whether his maturity is passed on to others)

I’ve called him a Swiss Army knife. I know that’s a common term for guys who are very versatile, because he is. He affects the game in a lot of ways. I said yesterday that you can’t really say he’s “this position” because he can play so many different positions. I always say you are what you can guard, and he can guard a lot of positions.

Whether his mentality rubs off on other guys, yeah, I think so. But like one of the core tenets of our program’s cultural blueprint, and that’s relentless effort. Secondly, there’s competitive excellence, thirdly, there’s the power of unity. Relentless effort is the expectation. We’re not going to have parades because we’re going to dive for loose balls and break glass. That’s the expectation. … Cadre is a very versatile piece.

(What was one feature of his program that he most wanted to see during the trip to the Bahamas?)

It’s like asking me if I love one of my kids more than the other. I love every single one of them with everything I have. … I want to see them all the time, every possession, right? Tireless effort is going from point A to point B as hard as you can, every time. Competitive excellence is every rep is a game rep. We had that this morning at 8 o’clock in our shoot around. Our guys were fixated on defending the baseline out of bounds for Calgary. Then the strength or the unity is the unconventional dedication to the guy next to you. That’s selflessness, that’s loving your teammate. I’ve seen a lot of those three over the last three months. We’re far, far, far, far from a finished product. In the world, I wish that these things didn’t exist and that social media didn’t exist, but it does. My daughters do it because that’s what teenagers do. That’s what people do. So guys are going to look at their phones, and people are going to tell them they’re the greatest thing since sliced ​​bread, and they’re the ’84 Lakers and stuff like that. We’re going to be really good, but we’re not good yet. We’ve got a long, long, long way to go. But I love this team, love the makeup, love the approach, love our toughness. We’ve got a chance to be really, really good.

(On what he would like to see corrected before the start of the season)

I don’t know right now, honestly. Everything would be another answer to your question. Once I finally watch this tape – I haven’t left my room since we got here, and I’m going to go on the water slide with my son in about 24 minutes. I’m going to find a way to rent a jet ski, and we’re going to go on the jet ski. But once I watch this tape, it’s going to take me about five hours to do it, because I’m going to go through every stinking thing I own. So the answer is everything. But until I watch the tape and break some things down – we have tape from the entire summer to watch.

(On the moment he knew James Scott was going to play, and he was hitting left-handed free throws)

James Scott is special. He’s 18 years old, he was one of the youngest players in Division I basketball last year, but he’s got an old basketball mind. He’s an old soul. He’s obsessed with who loves basketball like he loves breathing. He’s been driving me crazy the last day or so. ‘I’m playing, I’m playing, I’m playing, I’m playing.’ We’ve talked to the medical people and he couldn’t make it worse. It was just a matter of whether he could handle the pain and stuff like that. Then we’ll do more testing when we get back, when we get off the island. But he’s special in so many ways. Curious basketball mind, curious basketball mind. Loves to watch videos, never leaves the gym – which I’ve tried to get him out of the gym, but he doesn’t do that very often.

He shot left-handed because he can’t really move his wrist, so he shot left-handed free throws today in the shootaround. I think he was 0-for-20. Maybe not, but he didn’t make a lot of them. … But how cool is that? The kid goes out there and hits two left-handed free throws. Just a special kid. I’m blessed to be a coach.

(About what he learned about this group)

I felt like when we came here, we had a chance to be really good. But I always believe that. Obviously, we’re going to play a lot better teams, but I think we have a chance to be good. We’ve got a long way to go. I think one of the things that was great was that we really focused on — we always focus on being process-oriented. Regardless of the score, we really emphasized to the guys to try to be great in our system. Just to kind of have a 0-0 mentality at the end of every media timeout. I thought they did that the other day when we were up a lot, and I thought they did that today. It’s hard to do. Human nature creeps in, you just relax. ‘Hey, we’re up a lot. We’re going to win no matter what,’ and they didn’t. I thought some of our best defensive possessions — we made some mistakes in the final stretch. We got lazy around the rim, missed scouting report assignments on a shoot first guy. But I squinted a couple times and thought, ‘Man, we’re flying around like a bunch of dogs.’ In a game in the summer when we’re up 40 points. That was pretty cool to see. Everything is an opportunity to improve and get better. If we had wasted those last eight minutes and said, ‘Hey, let’s just start at the end of this game and go to the beach and have a good time,’ we wouldn’t have had a chance to get better. But those guys, they’re mature. I think that’s one of the strengths of our team.

(On the offensive rebounding in these two games)

I’ll let you know more after we do the grading. The old Don Meyer coaching quote is, it’s not what you teach, it’s what you emphasize. There are certain things that we really, really, really emphasize. You can’t emphasize everything, but offensive rebounding is one of them. So we’ll grade that. I can’t tell you yet. Obviously there were a lot of possessions where we had incredible effort to chase the ball, but whether you get it or not, you’re still going to be graded on your effort to chase the ball. It’s just hard to say right now whether we lived up to our standards or not.

(On Noah Waterman getting his first in-game action, pairing him with Pryor)

Noah twisted his ankle really bad right before we went on the trip. He had a lot of swelling. We treated this whole thing like a road trip. Our scouts were seriously like a train wreck. I just said, this is the middle of the season, let’s get him ready. Noah has worked really hard. Katie (Kresnik) has worked really hard and gotten him to the point where he can play today. I thought he did some really good things on both ends of the field.

You mentioned Kasean and him playing together. I mean, everybody playing together. I think that was something that was great to see, the chemistry on the floor starting to build. Guys sharing the ball, playing together, making unselfish basketball plays.

(Photo by Pat Kelsey: Twitter/X via BahaMarHoops)

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