Louisville basketball: Cardinals as characters from Stranger Things

Mike Wheeler | Luke Murray

Mike Wheeler is the leader of the younger cast of characters in stranger things. Eleven is obviously the biggest reason that Will was rescued in season one and the Upside Down was closed up and the world was saved from complete destruction, but Mike was the catalyst for Eleven to do so.

Without Mike, his friends and family would never have bought into the notion that parallel universes could exist. Mike is a leader and an outside-the-box thinker and he used the power of persuasion to help his friends, as well as Will’s mom Joyce, believe the impossible was possible.

Upon his arrival at the University of Louisville, assistant coach Luke Murray was tasked with something near-impossible: help hold together a team on the verge of completely breaking apart, and then go out and recruit a ton of great talent to a school coming off of scandals and probation and still amid FBI and NCAA investigations. No biggie, right?

Most Cards fans knew Murray as the son of beloved actor Bill Murray, but little did they know that he could use the power of persuasion to ultimately alter the course of the University of Louisville basketball program. In 2019, Murray ranked as the No. 1 recruiter in the ACC and No. 3 overall recruiter in the country at a school that many wrote off nationally following scandals and the firing of Rick Pitino.

Just as Mike used parallels between Dungeons and Dragons and the Upside Down to save Hawkins, Indiana, and possibly the world, Murray drew parallels between his success at Xavier and his plans at Louisville. And it worked.