Louisville basketball’s 2025-26 season concluded Saturday afternoon after the Cardinals lost to Michigan State in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Pat Kelsey made it clear the Cards' standard and expectations are to go further in the Big Dance, but what can’t go overlooked is that Louisville took the next step and won the program’s first March Madness game since 2017.
3 players Pat Kelsey and Louisville basketball must bring back next season
Many signs pointed to the Cardinals' season ending against Michigan State, whether it was Mikel Brown Jr. missing his sixth straight game, Louisville’s frontcourt, and their struggles to guard Coen Carr, but the Cardinals had one glaring weakness entering this NCAA Tournament, and Tom Izzo blatantly exposed  Louisville in the second round.
Michigan State exposed Louisville’s biggest flaw
Louisville’s season had many highs and lows, but if the Cardinals want to reach that next level and be back towards the top of the ACC and college basketball and see red, black, and white confetti stream down, and they cut down some nets, then Louisville has to find a way to beat ranked teams.
The Cardinals went 1-8 against the AP Poll's current top 25 teams, and went 0-6 against KenPom’s top 20. Louisville has experienced significant growth since Kelsey took over this program in 2024, but the next step is to compete with Duke and become a top-10 team in college basketball.
Louisville’s loss to Michigan State was how many expected the Cardinals' NCAA Tournament journey to go. Louisville’s season was highlighted by the Cardinals beating the teams they were supposed to beat, but losing to teams ranked inside the top 25. So, Louisville securing a win over USF, but losing to the Spartans, didn’t shock many, but that isn’t the standard for Louisville, and certainly wasn’t the expectation heading into the 2025 season.
Kelsey has this program trending up, but he just doesn’t have them in that elite category just yet. They have to find a way to beat teams that are better than they are, or at least compete with them. The Cardinals made the fans proud yesterday by sticking around with a top-10 team in the nation, especially without Brown, and earlier this season, that wasn’t the case.
In Louisville’s big games, they often found themselves down big as they were trailing Duke by 31, Tennessee by 25, Arkansas by 20, UNC by 16, Clemson by 15, Duke in the first game by 14, and SMU by 12. However, the Cardinals showed a lot of fight yesterday and kept the game within reach for most of the game, but as Cardinals fans know, there are no moral victories.
So, with the Transfer Portal just around the corner, Kelsey has to rebuild his team, and with the Cardinals' standard of making a run in the Big Dance, he understands the standard is to get back to that elite category and beat these ranked teams.
Related: 3 missed transfer portal targets Louisville could have used for a March Madness run
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