Louisville Basketball: Cunningham Earns First Ever Gold Jersey Of Mack Era

Louisville Basketball officially started last week as schools across the country were allowed to begin organized practices.  After the first week, grad transfer Christen Cunningham earned the first ever gold jersey honor of the Chris Mack era.

Louisville basketball is officially under way, and with a completely new coaching staff running the show, practices have been quite different than in the previous tenure. First year head coach Chris Mack likes to make his practices “ultra competitive,” even going as far as to give away a gold-trimmed jersey at the end of each week.

“The gold jersey dates back for about 12 years to Coach Mack’s time as both an assistant and head coach at Xavier” an anonymous source tells BRL.

And the process regarding the gold jersey and what it means to the team and the staff?

“The gold jersey really shows our coaching staff who is the most productive player in practice for the week. They wear that gold trimmed jersey the entire week of practice until we have a gold jersey presentation the following week. It’s a way to keep our practices ultra competitive and single out that one player who produced more than all the others for the week.”

The source went on to credit former Xavier leader and All-American PG standout Tu Holloway mentioning “I’m not for sure, but Tu Holloway (I believe) had 22 gold jerseys in his four years at Xavier.”

The gold jersey is the kind of motivation that inspires the tough and competitive culture we as Cardinal fans have heard of Mack and his practices at Xavier. The players are graded and earn the right to wear the gold jersey based upon a myriad of factors.

“The managerial staff keeps track of any and every possible statistic you can think of. From field goals to field goals missed to offensive rebounds to turnovers to getting beat off the dribble to getting an assist, you name it. At the end of the day when you add up all those statistics, a player will have a number that’s reflective of how many Cardinal Way points he accumulated for the day. At the end of the week, the player with the most Cardinal Way points wins the gold jersey.”

Here is an example of Mack keeping track of Gold Jersey Statistics back in 2013:

If anything, this proves Cunningham worked his butt off in practice getting his coaches and teammates attention. Now it’s up to Cunningham to raise the bar and for his teammates to take it from him. Who will it be next week?  Well it’s possible it could be Cunningham, as a player can keep the gold jersey so long as they earn it.

I suspect this won’t be the last time Cunningham wins the gold jersey this season and in time others will earn the honor. Eventually, players will have a history of the gold jersey so they can look back on their tenure with the team and see how many gold jerseys were won by a particular player during their UofL career.

One thing is for certain. PG Christen Cunningham, a 5th year grad transfer will always be the first player in the Chris Mack era at UofL to earn the honor to don the gold jersey. – GO CARDS!