Louisville basketball went 8-24 last year and won only three games in the ACC. This year, Cardinals head coach Pat Kelsey is the ACC Coach of the Year.
Kelsey, in his first year at Louisville, beat out Duke head coach Jon Scheyer for the award. Louisville went 25-6 overall and 18-2 in an albeit horrific ACC by power conference standards. The 17-win improvement from last year is good for the biggest turnaround in men’s Division I basketball this season and helped put Kelsey on the Naismith Men’s College Coach of the Year watchlist.
Led almost entirely by transfers, this year’s Cardinals have revitalized a program coming off of three straight losing seasons. Their 25 regular season wins was the most since 2016-17 when Rick Pitino was at the helm. Pitino was also the last Louisville coach to win conference coach of the year, doing it in Conference USA in 2005.
Bracket Matrix projects Louisville as the best 6 seed in the field with room to move up during the ACC Tournament. The Cardinals are the 2 seed in the annual event after being picked ninth by league coaches in the preseason. Louisville will enter the postseason on a nine-game winning streak, including a 20-point win over Stanford to end the regular season.
Louisville basketball earns more ACC postseason awards
Kelsey isn’t the only Cardinal to earn recognition from the ACC. Chucky Hepburn, who joined Louisville via Wisconsin in the transfer portal, was named league Defensive Player of the Year behind his 2.4 steals per game, which ranks top 10 in the country.
Hepburn was also named all-conference first team and received one vote for ACC Player of the Year, which Cooper Flagg won (coaches cannot vote for their own players).
The senior Hepburn had the best year of his career in 2024-25, posting 16.3 points and 5.9 assists per game. He also shot 85 percent from the free throw line, by far the best mark of his career.
Hepburn is the author of six 20-point games this season and two games with 10-plus assists. He also broke the Louisville single-game records for assists (16) and made free throws (17).
Hepburn’s teammate, Terrence Edwards Jr., was named All-ACC Third Team. He averaged 15.8 points, 2.7 assists and 3.5 rebounds per game after transferring from James Madison where he played his first four seasons.
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