LOUISVILLE, Ky. – It’s been a long time since the Louisville men’s basketball program was generating this much offseason momentum.
Just over a year ago, the Cardinals dismissed head coach Kenny Payne following a disastrous two-year tenure, hiring College of Charleston’s Pat Kelsey as his successor. Despite having to flip the entire roster and dealing with a plethora of in-season injuries, Kelsey was able to guide Louisville to a 27-8 record in year one.
Roughly two months later, Kelsey and his staff have once again done a great job on the roster construction front. But how well will Louisville perform in year two under his guidance?
It is a little early to tell, considering the full schedule hasn’t even been released yet, but we already have some idea thanks to the college basketball analytics site Bart Torvik.
Despite tipoff not coming for another six months, Torvik already has running projections for the upcoming 2025-26 season. This includes overall ranking, offensive and defensive ratings, and more.
While Louisville has been regarded by many as a top-five team heading into the 2025-26 season, Bart Torvik is not quite that high on the Cardinals, but rank them as the No. 15 team in college basketball. They are the third-highest team in the ACC, behind only Duke at No. 3 and North Carolina at No. 14. Houston, Purdue, Duke, Michigan and BYU round out the top five overall.
Louisville will head into the season with one of the best offenses in all of college basketball, sporting an adjusted offensive efficiency of 119.3, which comes in as the fifth-best mark in Division I. While their defense is projected to lag behind their offense, the Cards still have an adjusted defensive efficiency of 95.4, which sits at 25th overall.
Despite bringing in a few highly-ranked transfers and retaining several high-impact playmakers from last season, Torvik tabs UofL as the 97th-most talented team in D1 with projected effective talent rating of 31.2. With the amount of overall experience the roster sports, Louisville comes in at 70th with a projected effective experience rating of 2.22.
While the early computer models might not believe that Louisville is a top-five team at this juncture, various national analysts do. ESPN has them as high as No. 3 in their most recent way-too-early poll, On3 and The Athletic both have the Cardinals at No. 4, while The Field of 68 has them at No. 5.
It’s not hard to see why. In the weeks after the end of their season, Louisville added not one, not two, but three top-25 transfers in Ryan Conwell, Isaac McKneely and Adrian Wooley. Additionally, J’Vonne Hadley and Kasean Pryor are both taking advantage of extra years of eligibility, while top-25 Class of 2025 prospects Mikel Brown Jr. and Sananda Fru are joining the fold.
More Cardinals Stories
(Photo of Louie: Aaron Doster – Imagn Images)
You can follow Louisville Cardinals On SI for future coverage by liking us on Facebook, Twitter/X and Instagram:
Facebook – @LouisvilleOnSI
Twitter/X – @LouisvilleOnSI
Instagram – @louisvilleonsi
You can also follow Deputy Editor Matthew McGavic at @Matt_McGavic on Twitter/X and @mattmcgavic.bsky.social on Bluesky
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
