One of the most surprising aspects of Louisville’s remarkable 2024-25 season turnaround had nothing to do with the folks at the center of the resurgence, but one of the players who wasn’t part of the 19-win improvement.
Entering the campaign, Kasean Pryor — one of the last of the 15 new members of the program to sign on with U of L — was arguably the most-hyped member of Pat Kelsey’s first Cardinal roster.
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After playing his first two seasons of college basketball at Boise State and then another at Northwest Florida junior college, the 6’10 Pryor was the breakout star on a 2023-24 South Florida team that went 16-2 in the American Athletic Conference and won the league’s regular season title.
Pryor showed off a wide range of skills on both ends of the floor, averaging 13 points, 7.9 rebounds and 1.8 assists to go along with a team-best 23 blocks. A three level scorer who hit 37 of 105 three-point tries (35.2%), Pryor posted double-doubles in 10 AAC games, including an 18-point, 15-rebound effort in USF’s 93-83 loss to eventual AAC tournament champ UAB.
All of this took him from a name that only college basketball diehards knew to one of the most highly sought-after players in the transfer portal. One who would ultimately garner, according to a source close to the program, a seven-figure payday from Louisville.
After a strong showing in a pair of exhibition games in The Bahamas, the enthusiasm for Pryor’s debut as a member of a power conference roster grew even greater. A handful of college basketball personalities projected Pryor to be a First Team All-ACC performer. Even more predicted that he would lead the Cardinals in scoring.
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All seemed to be going according to plan before a freak play in the middle of Louisville’s Battle 4 Atlantis championship game against Oklahoma changed everything. Late in the first half, the Sooners star guard, Jeremiah Fears, appeared to give Cardinal guard Chucky Hepburn a bit of a shove. The momentum didn’t just knock Hepburn to the floor, but into the lower body of Pryor, who crumbled to the ground in a heap.
Worst fears were realized two days later when U of L announced that Pryor would miss the remainder of the season with a torn ACL. At the time of his injury, Pryor owned the 7th-best offensive rating of any player in the ACC, according to Ken Pomeroy.
“Kasean is going to continue to make an impact on this team, even though he’s not on the floor,” Kelsey said at the time of the injury. “His locker room presence, his energy, his personality is infectious and he’s a terrific leader on our team. So we expect him to contribute in that regard moving forward. Obviously, it wasn’t in the cards, no pun intended, for him to finish the season on the floor helping us, but he’ll continue to have an impact on the season off the floor.”
Pryor lived up to his head coach’s expectations. He was a fixture on the Cardinal sidelines over the next four months, consistently encouraging his teammates as they rolled to an 18-2 ACC record, an appearance in the ACC tournament championship game, and the program’s first trip to the NCAA Tournament since 2019.
Still, when the season came to a close, there was some doubt over whether or not Pryor would choose to return to Louisville for his final collegiate season. Kelsey quickly restocked his roster with one of the best transfer portal classes in the country, added three players from overseas, brought in the top point guard in the class of 2025, and also returned three players from the core of his 2024-25 squad.
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Ultimately, Pryor decided that chasing a national championship with the Cardinals was something he couldn’t pass up. He announced his return to U of L on April 22.
“No doubt, during my injury the support and love I received from the city was just unbelievable,” Pryor said last month. “Louisville’s become almost my second home. The people have been great to me.”
Still, there are questions. A year after he was widely viewed as the centerpiece on a rebuilding Louisville team, there are now questions about where he’ll fit in on a loaded roster that is widely expected to compete for a national championship. And then, of course, there are the concerns about whether or not the supremely versatile forward will be the same player he was before the injury. Those questions are amplified by the fact that the Cardinals will play a handful of their biggest non-conference, including against arch-rival Kentucky, in the season’s first few weeks.
“I will be ready first game of the season,” Pryor said. And I know everybody’s been asking — I will be ready for the Kentucky game.“
