LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Not many people get the chance to take a vacation trip to the Bahamas. Later this year, the Louisville men’s basketball program will do it twice in the span of a few months.
Just weeks into the upcoming 2024-25 season, which will be the Cardinals’ first year under new head coach Pat Kelsey, Louisville will head there for the 2024 edition of Battle 4 Atlantis. The Cardinals will play three games against opponents to be determined Nov. 27-29, with the remainder of the eight-team field consisting of Arizona, Davidson, Gonzaga, Indiana, Oklahoma, Providence and West Virginia.
But before its regular-season trip to the Bahamas’ capital city of Nassau, Louisville will make a stop there during the offseason.
At the end of last monthLouisville announced that they will also take a “foreign exhibition tour” to the Bahamas for the Baha Mar Hoops Summer League. There, the Cardinals will play against a pair of international opponents to be determined and will arrive at the Baha Mar resort on July 28 before returning to the United States on August 2.
While Kelsey was busy building his roster from scratch, Louisville’s management put together the preseason trip on short notice. He believes the overseas tour will serve as a crucial aspect of his team’s development.
“It’s fantastic,” Kelsey said. “It really allows us to accelerate the growth curve of this team. We implement what we do, how we do it, our system, our terminology, we teach the guys how we practice.”
For starters, the trip will give Louisville some additional practice opportunities. Under current NCAA rules, during the summer, teams are limited to just four hours per week on basketball-specific activities. This includes both on-court practice of any kind and video analysis. Additionally, teams have eight hours per week for strength and conditioning.
When a team travels overseas, the NCAA allows them to have 10 full days of practice in addition to the four hours of on-court instruction per week. These practice days are what a team would normally have over the course of the regular season, where there are no restrictions whatsoever. Louisville plans to take these 10 days of practice before the start of the summer overseas trip.
“When we get to the end of those 10 practices, we get a huge advantage,” Kelsey said.
Needless to say, gaining additional practice time (and the experience of playing against international opponents) is a huge boost for any team in terms of their off-season preparation for the upcoming season, as well as overall team chemistry. But for a team like Louisville, they’ll need to build all the chemistry they can.
Following the firing of former head coach Kenny Payne in March, every scholarship player on the roster entered the portal. That left Kelsey and his staff in charge of literally building an entire team from scratch.
Fortunately, Kelsey and company did a great job on this front, landing 12 Division 1 transfers and one high school prospect. Louisville’s transfer portal class, according to On3, is ranked No. 1 in all of college basketball.
But as we know, talent isn’t everything and chemistry plays a big role as well. For example, last offseason, Arkansas put together an extremely talented team both in the portal and in high school. The Razorbacks finished with a 16-17 record, and their head coach, Eric Musselman, then left for USC.
So far, the chemistry between seasons is off to a good start. Kelsey He was impressed for the first month of Louisville’s summer training and the players themselves I have adapted well As the team progresses, it will adjust to its new surroundings. Still, the opportunity for the team to get more work done on the court during the summer will help them move forward once preseason rolls around.
“We’ll get back together when it really starts to get better and it really counts. When practices start in late September and early October, we’ll be able to look back on these 10 practices and say, ‘Man, we’re a lot further ahead than we should have been. ‘ So that was the main goal,” Kelsey said.
While developing chemistry on the court is certainly a huge boost, the opportunity to build camaraderie off the court is an equally important advantage. Kelsey cites the “cultural aspect” of being able to go to another country, while the players themselves echoed the importance of developing team bonds in a setting other than basketball.
“It’s going to be fun to take that trip with the guys and get closer to each other,” guard/forward J’Vonne Hadley said. “Chemistry is a big thing, no matter what team you’re on. Just going to the Bahamas and playing those games, spending time together, just experiencing that trip as a whole, is going to put us a step ahead. We need that. We’re a whole new team, a whole new coaching staff, and it’s going to be really good for us.”
(Photo by Pat Kelsey: Matt Stone/Courier Journal/USA TODAY)
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