Louisville basketball, Pat Kelsey can help ACC

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Only four ACC teams made the 2025 March Madness field, one of which survived the first weekend. How U of L’s quick turnaround under Pat Kelsey gives the conference hope and a blueprint for success.

Louisville basketball: Pat Kelsey praises team after NCAA Tournament loss

Louisville basketball coach Pat Kelsey praises the Cardinals following an 89-75 loss to Creighton in the first round of the 2025 NCAA Tournament.

Only four ACC teams made the 2025 March Madness field – Louisville among them for the first time since 2019, and Duke the lone survivor after Week 1.Since 2021, over half a dozen coaches responsible for 30 Final Four appearances and 10 NCAA titles have left the conference. Four schools made hires this offseason.

When discussions began about bringing Miami into the ACC in the early 2000s, legendary Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski expressed prophetic concern.

“The thing that made our league is basketball,” Krzyzewski told ESPN at the time.

“… Miami is the domino to everything. When you’re in a league and you make a huge decision like that, then you have to be cognizant of the impact of the other aspects. … Is the football championship (with 12 teams) that important that it dilutes something else that you have?”

Two decades later, the ACC has ballooned into an 18-member league encompassing three time zones and both coasts of the continental United States. Louisville joined in 2014, bringing a basketball lineage worthy of its new blue-blooded brethren and a strong Charlie Strong-led football program. U of L was one of six ACC teams to make the NCAA Tournament that year.

Only four made it in 2025 — Louisville among them for the first time since 2019, and Duke the lone survivor after Week 1 (a first for the league since NCAA rules allowed multiple bids per conference 50 years ago). Prior to Selection Sunday, the ACC never had fewer than one-third of its members make the field since it expanded to 64 teams in 1985. Meanwhile, the SEC and Big Ten earned double-digit…

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Publish date : 2025-03-25 09:16:00

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