Louisville basketball fans show up, bring enthusiasm for first big game of Pat Kelsey era

“Tennessee?” Pat Kelsey said, taken aback.

The first-year Louisville men’s basketball coach scrunched up his face, raised his eyebrows and gritted his teeth.

“Game 2?”

Cardinals athletics director Josh Heird and assistant coach Brian Kloman had just pitched Kelsey a top-15 matchup against Rick Barnes’ stalwart Volunteers for the second game of the 2024-25 season. Before Saturday, U of L held a 12-8 all-time record against UT, but the programs hadn’t met since 2018. Louisville hadn’t defeated Tennessee since 2008 — when Kelsey (now in his third head coaching job) was an assistant coach at Wake Forest.

Heird pleaded with his newest hire.

“I’m telling you PK, do the game,” Heird urged Kelsey. “Let’s play it. The city will show up. The place will be packed. It’s going to be rocking.”

To Heird’s credit, Louisville fans delivered. They packed the KFC Yum! Center on Saturday afternoon, with an announced attendance of 16,976 — surpassing 15,000 for the third time in three years. The “White-Out” theme solicited white-hot energy from the U of L faithful for Kelsey’s first ranked matchup at the helm.

Betting lines that excited U of L fans never came to fruition — U of L was a 1.5-point underdog Friday afternoon, was favored by 2.5 points by tipoff and ended up falling 77-55 to UT. As some fans began filing out of the Yum! Center with about 6 ½ minutes left in the game, hope remained for this new era of Louisville basketball. Thanks not to outside expectations but to Kelsey’s passion and exciting new roster.

“The Yum! Center was electric,” Kelsey said after the game and after lamenting over his team’s 22-point loss. “We asked people to come out, and they came out big. This is as elite of a college basketball atmosphere as you’re gonna find anywhere.”

Later on in his news conference, Kelsey made an impassioned request:

“I would ask our fans, I would ask our donors, just like I told our guys in that locker room, ‘Don’t blink. Don’t blink,'” he said,…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/louisville-basketball-fans-show-bring-191413519.html

Author : The Courier Journal

Publish date : 2024-11-09 19:14:00

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