Pat Kelsey team for next season

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Year 1 of Pat Kelsey’s Louisville basketball revival has come to an end.

Now, after leading the Cardinals to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2019, the 49-year-old Cincinnati native turns his attention toward sustained success.

Step 1: replacing the following scholarship players, who have exhausted their eligibility:

There’s no guarantee that the six names listed above will be the only departures. The NCAA transfer portal opens for business March 24, and who knows how things will shake out from there.

Here’s a breakdown of the U of L players who are in line to return in 2025-26, if they don’t elect to pursue greener pastures elsewhere, and the newcomers who committed to Kelsey during his inaugural campaign:

Hepburn is passing the torch of “Point Guard U” to Mikel Brown Jr., the 29th McDonald’s All-American in Louisville history. The 6-foot-3 floor general is a product of DME Academy in Daytona Beach, Florida, and ranks among the top 10 players in the 2025 cycle, regardless of position, on the 247Sports Composite. In February, ESPN had him as a lottery pick in its first 2026 NBA Draft projections.

Sananda Fru is a 6-11, 245-pound destroyer of rims in Germany’s top-flight Basketball Bundesliga, where he’s played since 2021. A source close to the U of L program told The Courier Journal that the 21-year-old “should” have two years of collegiate eligibility upon arriving in the 502. Fru was an early entrant for the 2023 NBA Draft but later withdrew his name from consideration.

J’Vonne Hadley, U of L’s consummate glue guy, is the first of two fifth-year Cards who can take advantage of a December court ruling that prohibits the NCAA from counting time players spend at the junior-college level toward their eligibility clock. The 6-6 native of St. Paul, Minnesota, was U of L’s top rebounder in 2024-25.

Koren Johnson tore his labrum in mid-November. A couple weeks later, the 6-2 junior guard from Seattle took to social media to announce he was undergoing season-ending shoulder…

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Source link : https://www.courier-journal.com/story/sports/college/louisville/2025/03/20/louisville-basketball-roster-2025-26-pat-kelsey-transfer-portal-recruiting/79320678007/

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Publish date : 2025-03-20 18:27:00

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