Louisville basketball roundtable: Looking back at a historic offseason
By Jacob Lane
To you, what was the biggest move of the off-season that wasn’t the hiring of Chris Mack?
Ethan Sprowles: The hiring of Strength and Conditioning Coach Andy Kettler. He’s the best in the business. At West Virginia, he was one of the main reasons why they were known as “Press Virginia”. A team that was able to be extremely tough, physical, and still be able to run a full-court press on defense. The team is noticeably bigger and stronger.
GTC: The Louisville Live event. Everything about Louisville Basketball feels new. The culture has changed and this event brought the team to the middle of the city for the fans to see in person this is the city’s team and Coach Mack is building something special.
Jacob Lane: It has to be keeping the entire class of 2017 on campus (aside from Lance Thomas). Last year I think we can all agree that there was a good chance Louisville was going to experience what many programs go through during a time of transition and that’s a mass exodus. It seemed like Deng Adel and Ray Spalding would head off to the NBA a year early, which of course they did, along with the graduating seniors leaving campus (Anas Mahmoud and Quentin Snider). However, I think we also thought that guys like Jordan Nwora, VJ King, Darius Perry, and even Steven Enoch might all transfer to avoid playing for another new coach. Thankfully, Mack was able to save that from happening, and now Louisville has a great base of talent to build on going forward.
Ross Prophater: I think the addition of Strength & conditioning coach Andy Kettler from Bob Huggins staff at West Virginia was the biggest move of the offseason. It’s clear from the body transformations of the players this summer that Kettler is going to bring a new looking player to Denny Crum court.