It’s been just 24 months since I was writing and all of us were talking incessantly about the desire for the Louisville men’s basketball program to return to a state of ”normal.“
It might as well have been 24 years ago.
Chucky Hepburn, Terrence Edwards and “The Revivalists” will be remembered forever. Of this I have no doubt.
The group won 27 games — more than the previous three seasons combined — became the first Cardinal 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.
Perhaps more important than all of those accomplishments was the fact that they made winter in the city of Louisville feel like it’s supposed to again. No more talk about scandals, no more talk about who the next coach might be, no more talk about whether or not the fans would even watch the games (shoutout, Corito); The buzz was back in the city, and it was all centered around actual basketball talk.
Here’s the thing about normalcy, though: It’s an illusion. In all walks of life. There are no universally accepted and clearly defined borders within which all “normal” activity must exist. “Normal” is always changing, and any understanding of what is “normal” is always temporary.
The word “normal” feels particularly out of place when using it in the realm of a sport that is largely defined by its “madness.”
There are 368 teams competing in Division-I men’s basketball this season. A normal season for North Carolina and a normal season for North Carolina A&T are two extremely different things. The definition is only slightly easier to pinpoint when talking about each program specifically. A national title winning season or a Final Four run isn’t necessarily “normal” for the Tar Heels. Neither is missing the NCAA tournament or being on the wrong end of a first round upset.
Clarity in college basketball is every bit the illusion that normalcy is, especially right now. The sport is existing on a planet previously uninhabited. A handful of freshmen are being paid more than a handful of NBA rookies, court systems are determining the eligibility of different players who all meet the same requirements, fan bases are still adjusting to learning 10 or more new names and faces at the beginning of every campagin.
Despite all this, when you read the following statement, I have all the faith in the world that you’re going to understand it in exactly the same way that I do: Tonight at 9 p.m., the Louisville men’s basketball program is going to tip-off a season that should feel overwhelmingly normal to the U of L fan base.
That return was supposed to occur a year ago, and yet … for a variety of reason … it didn’t. Injuries, off-the-court rumors and subpar performances against the biggest and baddest opponents on the schedule left Louisville fans unable to foster the types of January and February daydreams they had entered the season expecting to have.
U of L won 24 games, saw two players hear their names called in the NBA Draft, and tasted victory in the NCAA Tournament for the first time in nearly a decade. That’s a fine season. What it isn’t — for a program that has won three national titles, played in 10 Final Fours and crashed the Sweet 16 28 times — is “normal.”
Louisville fans knowing basketball has been discussed so much over the years that it has nearly become a cliche. More times than not, there’s truth in cliches. U of L was winning more than it was losing throughout last winter, but Cardinal fans could see and feel that something was amiss. The team was good, but not at the level where the fan base could entertain realistic thoughts of watching them play on the first weekend of April.
“Can this team win it all” talk in November shifted to “they have to at least win a game in the tournament” discussions throughout the first several weeks of the new year. Attendance remained subpar, and the buzz that had been brought back to the city the year before morphed into negative energy mostly surrounding the mystery of what was happening behind the scenes with star freshman point guard Mikel Brown Jr.
Things still didn’t feel the way they used to for a group of people desperate to go home again. It’s a frustrating feeling when you suspect that it’s coming. It’s downright exhausting and depressing when your heart was set on more.
For just over a decade now, little around here has felt normal.
Katina Powell, Andre McGee, a canceled postseason, a lost championship banner, the FBI probe, a fired Hall of Fame coach, a fired athletic director, the David Padgett season, COVID, another canceled postseason, another extortion case, another FBI probe, parting ways with a coach in the middle of a season, losing, losing, losing and more losing.
In the midst of all these storms, there have been more moments than I can count where folks have declared a parting of the clouds, a return to the way things are supposed to be. Unfortunately, the warm rays of normalcy have never quite been able to break through. For 10 years we have remained confused, angry, dark and cold.
At the lowest points of the period of time that we will hopefully refer to as the lowest in program history and are now prepared to leave behind forever, we’ve all been prone to uttering those four all-too-easy to catch and release words: my god, “it’s just a game.”
On the surface, of course, it’s an accurate statement, but I think the implication inherent in the phrase is about as drastic an oversimplification as there is. Especially when the saying is directed at fans like the ones who have been following Louisville basketball their entire lives.
If you’re reading this, you probably spend as much time reading about U of L basketball, thinking about U of L basketball, going to U of L basketball games or watching them from your home as I do. When you’re willing to devote that much of yourself to something, to anything, phrases like “it’s just a game” fall pretty flat.
It’s been easy to forget in recent years that this is supposed to be about basketball, about on-court victories and defeats for an institution most of us have cared far too much about for as long as we can remember. For a while, the extreme lows of the past decade were mostly focused on off-the-court matters. It made us yearn for the “normalcy” of on-court failures. The on-court failures then returned, but they were anything other than normal.
The numbers, the records set and the wild facts created during the lowest of the lows are still damn near impossible to process.
Twelve wins and FIFTY-TWO losses over two seasons.
The only two 21-plus loss seasons in the 110-year history of the program.
More exhibition game losses to Division-II opponents (2) than games won away from home (1).
More losses by 20 points or more (14) than overall wins (12).
A final finish of No. 290 on KenPom in 2023 and No. 203 a year later.
You could have given me a hypothetical with any sort of NCAA punishment — postseason ban, TV ban, death penalty, not allowed to play anyone taller than 6-feet — and these are still numbers that I would have deemed impossible by the University of Louisville men’s basketball program.
All of it still feels like something of a fever dream.
The new jolt of hope arrived in the form that it typically does: A sweeping change, a new regime, a believable promise of a return to all that was good and a shedding of all that has been bad.
Through the transfer portal, Kelsey quickly assembled a roster loaded with talent and experience, one that was fully capable of playing his brand of basketball and having success doing it against an extremely challenging schedule. He endeared himself to his new fan base by consistently engaging with them, and by showcasing through his words, his action and his energy that he fully understood and appreciated the gravity of the position he found himself in. It was impressive, refreshing, and inarguably encouraging.
It also would have meant nothing if he hadn’t won.
He did win.
The number of people who “fell back in love” with Louisville basketball during that season is incalculable, but we all heard the stories from people we know. Maybe you were one of them.
From the blowout of Indiana to the ridiculous regular season run through the ACC to the late-night Chucky buzzer-beater in March and then even to the bitching about a ridiculously unfair NCAA Tournament draw, the 2024-25 season felt like a dream.
A big part of the dream was setting the stage for even grander dreams to feel like reality again.
The return to the grand stage was supposed to take place last winter. It didn’t.
There are reasons to believe the real ascension will begin in just a few hours.
This evening, the 2026—27 Louisville men’s basketball season will begin when the Cardinals host the South Chattanooga Mocs. If the team plays the way I believe it will, tonight will begin the return of a beautiful five-month journey that should reignite even more of the feelings and emotions in all of us that we forgot were there.
We need to lose ourselves again.
The thoughts of what was will never fully disintegrate, but for these five months they need to exist only behind a box somewhere in the seasonal decorations closet of our collective sports brain. We need to once again immerse ourselves in bracket projections and debates over lineup combinations. We need to once again religiously check the rankings of predictive metrics whose formulas we couldn’t begin to comprehend. We need to once again pretend as though this season, this period of time from early to November through late March or early April, is the only thing that matters.
Unlike last two years, however, this year is about remembering who we’ve been and who we still are.
The game has changed, the way we follow it has as well. The feelings and the emotions don’t need to.
The checking of bracket projections shouldn’t be about seeing whether or not our name is in there, it should be about seeing where he stand against the resumes of the other elite teams in the country. The non-conference season shouldn’t be just about beating the teams we’re supposed to beat and taking our best shot against the marquee opponents, it should be about trying to stack as many signature wins as possible to build the strongest resume for March possible. A rivalry loss — even if it happens inside a building where the good guys haven’t prevailed since 2008 — won’t simply be shrugged off.
The normal that Pat Kelsey brought back to Cardinal basketball 24 months ago isn’t enough anymore, neither is the step forward that took place in year two.
Normal around here revolves around the pursuit of championships. We talk about it, we daydream about it, and we obsess about it throughout the coldest months of the calendar year. That’s the way that — up until the drama of the last decade — it had been for a long time, and that’s the way it should always be moving forward.
The pieces are there, the coaching staff is there, the fans are dying to believe, and now the stage is set.
The beautiful journey is back, and so is Louisville basketball.
Let’s have ourselves a season.