The Louisville Cardinals have opened the 2025-26 season at 2-0, with their latest win being a 106-70 blowout win against the Jackson State Tigers. Louisville made program history following the blowout win as it was the first time that the Cardinals had started the season off scoring 100+ points in the first two games of the year, as per Louisville stats keeper Kelly Dickie.
The last time that Louisville even had a stretch of back-to-back games of 100+ points, it was during the 2010-11 season when they scored 114 against Western Kentucky and 104 against Morgan State.
In the win against Jackson State, Louisville was led by Ryan Conwell’s 19 points. Mikel Brown Jr. added 18 points, Khani Rooths finished with 16 points and Sananda Fru had 12 points.
The Cardinals are entering year two with Pat Kelsey at the helm as head coach. Kelsey took over the program ahead of the 2024-25 season after Louisville opted to part ways with Kenny Payne. In Kelsey’s first year, he led the Cardinals to a 27-8 record overall, and 18-2 in ACC play.
The team also snapped a five season streak of missing the NCAA Tournament. Louisville lost to Creighton in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament.
Louisville added a couple of transfers this offseason in Connell, Isaac McNeely and Adrian Wooley. They also lost a few players to the transfer portal in Koren Johnson and James Scott. As far as their freshman class of 2025, the Cardinals added Brown, Fru, Mouhamed Camara and Vangelis Zougris.
The Cardinals also created a bit of a stir last month when Louisville landed the commitment of former G League guard London Johnson. Johnson will join the program in 2026, and it caused no shortage of controversy considering Johnson has already played professionally in the G League. He was, however, granted two years of eligibility from the NCAA.
