For all the focus on the negative that comes with the new era of NIL and the transfer portal in college basketball, there is a universally-agreed upon good at play that wasn’t present a decade ago: Snap of the finger rebuilds have never been more attainable for power conference programs currently going through the lowest of lows.
Louisville has become the poster child for this.
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Just 20 months ago, one of the most storied programs in the history of college basketball was putting the finishing touches on a third consecutive losing season. More shocking than that, they were wrapping up a two-year stretch where the program finished dead last in the ACC in back-to-back seasons and produced a total of only 12 wins.
Enter Pat Kelsey, the program’s third (maybe fourth) choice to try and get the program back to where it was before the stripper scandal, the Adidas scandal, the firing of Rick Pitino, the COVID-influenced fall of Chris Mack and the disastrous hiring of Kenny Payne took the porgram to depths previously unthinkable.
Kelsey quickly pieced together a roster headlined by a handful of key additions from the transfer portal and some of the best players from the Charleston program he had led to the NCAA Tournament in consecutive seasons. He dubbed the effort to get Louisville back to its rightful spot near the top of the college basketball totem pole as “The ReviVille.” Fans ate it up.
They ate it up even more when they experienced the results.
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The 2024-25 Cardinals won 27 games — more than the previous three seasons combined — became the first U of L team to play for an ACC Tournament title, made the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2019, and created a load of faith from the fan base in a head coach most of them couldn’t have picked out of a lineup the year before.
After a first round loss to Creighton in the Big Dance, Kelsey immediately went back to work. He quickly landed three of the best shooters in the transfer portal in Ryan Conwell, Isaac McKneely and Adrian Wooley, he convinced key contributors J’Vonne Hadley and Kasean Pryor to return for another year, and perhaps most importantly, he finalized the signing of one of the highest-profile recruits in program history: Five-star point guard Mikel Brown Jr.
If year one was about getting the focus of the basketball program back on actual basketball, year two quickly became about getting the focus of the basketball program back on competing for championships.
Here’s the thing about basketball in the state of Kentucky though: There is a constant secondary conversation that exists at a level not quite as high as the one about the pursuit of national championships, but which is every bit as ever-present. That conversation surrounds the bitter rivalry between Louisville and Kentucky.
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The use of “hate” is excessive in almost any context, especially when we’re talking about sports, but the Battle of the Bluegrass brings utilization of the word closer to the edge of appropriateness than any other.
Two programs with rich histories. Two fan bases that care about this as much as any others. An area of the country that has been obsessed with basketball for about as long as basketball has been a thing.
On the surface, Louisville-Kentucky has everything you could ever want in a rivalry. There’s only one thing that’s been missing: The Cardinals don’t beat the Wildcats nearly enough.
Heading Tuesday night’s annual showdown — easily the earliest in the history of the rivalry — Kentucky had won three straight, 14 of the last 17, and held a decisive 40-17 all-time advantage in the series.
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Kelsey was well aware of all of this.
“The rivalry in this state is awesome, man,” the U of L head coach said last month. “It’s what college basketball is all about. Rivalries are rivalries because one team wins sometimes and the other team wins sometimes. We got to start doing our part. I get that.”
If he didn’t get it a year ago, he certainly does now.
The first year of the “Pat Kelsey vs. Mark Pope” era of the rivalry saw a 93-85 Kentucky victory in Lexington where there was a skirmish on the U of L bench, UK’s Brandon Harrison throwing a forearm into the back of Chucky Hepburn’s head, and a postgame celebration that saw Wildcat players throwing “L’s down” at midcourt to a frenzied Rupp Arena crowd.
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Ask 10 college basketball fans in the Commonwealth about the reason for Kentucky’s dominance in the rivalry series, and you’re liable to get 10 different answers. Some credit the fact that UK’s perennially young roster (in the John Calipari days) didn’t know enough about the rivalry to tighten up, you’ll also talk to people who will claim that the game is officiated differently, and even more who will note that, more times than not, the Wildcats have simply fielded a better team than the Cardinals.
Whatever the reason (or reasons) the fact of the matter is that Kentucky’s dominance of Louisville over the last two decades has both driven Cardinal fans insane and held the rivalry back.
Again, none of this was news to Kelsey.
“It’s hard to truly describe how much this rivalry means,” Kelsey said after last year’s loss. “They reminded me early and often and every single day. Every time I get gas, every time I get something to eat in the community it’s: ‘Hey coach, how you doin’? You gonna beat Kentucky this year?‘ So I get it.
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“It’s 365 days or whatever it is until the next time we play again, and I’m gonna be reminded about 4 million times when that game’s comin’ up. I can promise you, I want to win it more than anybody.”
Things felt different on Tuesday night, and not just because the game was being played a month and-a-half earlier than fans had grown accustomed to.
For the first time in who knows how long, Louisville looked like the aggressor, and not the side that was simply playing and hoping for something good to happen. Behind the sensational play of Brown Jr., the Cardinals opened up an 18-point lead in the first half and led by as many as 20 in the second. When Kentucky mounted a furious rally late in the game, the home team didn’t bat an eye. Final score: Louisville 96, Kentucky 88 in the second highest-scoring contest in the history of a rivalry that dates back to 1913.
When you’re taking the reigns at a program with more history than 98% of the 364 other teams in the sport, it’s rare that you have an opportunity to do something that hasn’t been done before you. That’s doubly true when two of your predecessors are national championship-winning coaches enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame.
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At Louisville, Kelsey has an opportunity to do something that Rick Pitino and even Denny Crum could never accomplish: Beat Kentucky on a consistent basis.
While Crum was the driving force behind the resumption of the rivalry in the 1980s, he still managed just seven wins in 20 tries against Kentucky, and never beat the Wildcats twice in a row. Pitino also started strong and then struggled, going 6-12 against his former school while at U of L, including 2-8 against his arch-nemesis, Calipari.
Now, Kelsey has his first triumph over Kentucky and it comes over what appears to be one of the better Wildcat teams the Cardinals have beaten over the past three decades. UK entered the evening ranked No. 9 in the AP poll and No. 1 on KenPom. They field a roster worth a reported $22 million — easily the most of any program in the sport. They’ll be just fine in the long run, but Tuesday night’s loss will sting every step of the way. It always does with these two programs.
No rivalry embodies the notion of “passion bordering on insanity” more than this one. No coach fits that same description better than Kelsey, who was famously referred to by his mentor Skip Prosser as a man who “makes coffee nervous.”
His passion revived the program in the blink of an eye, and now his confidence revived the rivalry in less than a year. Louisville fans can’t wait to see what he’s able to do next.
