Louisville’s Pat Kelsey swiftly shuts down lineup change despite slow starts

Louisville is coming off a 76-65 victory over Notre Dame on Wednesday night. It is now two wins in a row for Louisville since they got destroyed by Duke. Despite getting the win over the Irish, it was not a pretty game for the Cardinals.

Louisville got off to a slow start once again, spotting Notre Dame an early lead, and leading to questions from the media for head coach Pat Kelsey. This includes questions on lineup changes from Matt McGavic of OnSI.

“I’m not going to. Good suggestion, though,” Kelsey responded when the suggestion of a lineup change was made.

Louisville missed multiple shots in the first seven minutes of the game, while seemingly not having an answer for Notre Dame. The Irish built a 16-7 lead, even though they came into the game as a massive underdog. The Cardinals did turn it around, gaining the lead just three minutes later thanks to a 12-2 run. They would go on to lead by six points at the end of the first half. Still, Kelsey is left confounded on how to get his team started strong.

“I’m going have the guys put their left shoe on first before their right shoe. The guys that wear undershirts don’t wear undershirts, the guys that part their hair on that side, let’s try the other way. You know, I don’t know, we haven’t changed anything we do, our warmups have been phenomenal. Brian Kloman has been with me a long time, and he is the barometer for warmups. I always ask him first how we were and he said ‘locked, lathered’. I felt it was like déjà vu. I really felt it was like deja vu from the other day,” Kelsey mused in in post game press conference, per McGavic.

Both SMU and Duke, Louisville’s last two opponents, have built leads in the first ten minutes of the game. Louisville was able to come back against SMU and this time against Notre Dame, but agaisnt a stronger team, could not pull the comeback.

“I looked around, and I’m like, you remember that show Punked, I felt like I was being punked. That’s the way it goes. We’ll look at it, see if we need to change something up. It’s been tough, we haven’t gotten off to good starts lately,” the Louisville coach concluded.

Despite some slow starts, the Cardinals are still 16-6 and 6-4 in ACC play. This is setting up Louisville for a six-seed in the NCAA tournament. Regardless, slow starts need to be figured out before they hit the tournament to avoid being victims of an upset. Louisville will have its next chance to figure out its first-half woes on Saturday, visiting Wake Forest.

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