Pat Kelsey came running onto the court at the KFC Yum! Center, grabbing a whistle from a manager without slowing down and starting a vibrant one-hour walkthrough for his Louisville Cardinals. The opponent that night was the Wake Forest Demon Deacons. There was no time to waste.
It was 10:05 a.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 28, and Kelsey had spent a couple of days stewing over his zone offense, knowing Louisville would have to navigate Steve Forbes’s confusing and combative 1-3-1 defense. By Sunday night, Kelsey and his staff had scrapped their plan and started over, implementing a different attack for this game.
Kelsey put his players through a crash course on the new approach Monday, including a long film session. But there was plenty left to button up on Tuesday morning, with tip-off fewer than nine hours away. With his practice plan tucked into the front of his gray sweatpants, the 49-year-old Kelsey sprang into action as the starters lined up against the scout team’s 1-3-1.
“James,” Kelsey said to big man James Scott. “You are screening like a mofo.”
The 5' 9" (at best) Kelsey inserted himself for the 6' 11" Scott and went about the business of screening like a mofo—hitting the man at the top of the zone, hitting the wing, hitting the other wing—with cartoonish energy. If this were a pickup game at the Y, Kelsey would be the annoying opponent playing like Final Four berth was on the line.
The screen-like-a-mofo intent was to free up passing and driving lanes for point guard Chucky Hepburn, shooting windows for perimeter marksmen Reyne Smith and Terrence Edwards Jr., and the occasional backside lob for wing J’Vonne Hadley. The starting five absorbed the new plan quickly and carved up the scout team.
Kelsey then broke up the X’s and O’s session for a high-energy, high-volume shooting competition, music throbbing through the arena and everyone shouting encouragement. (Smith, second in the nation in made three-pointers with 91, swished so many consecutive wing threes that he started trying to bank them in for an added degree of difficulty.) After a silent foul-shooting session and a defensive segment focusing on Wake’s leading scorer, Hunter Sallis, peripatetic Pat called the team together at precisely 11:05 a.m. to end practice.
Anticipating a bruising game, much like the Duke Blue Devils’ slog against the Demon Deacons three days earlier, Kelsey called out the chant: “Rock fight on three!”
“One-two-three, rock fight!”
Before the players dispersed, Kelsey quietly recommended they stop by the small group sitting in the front row watching the walkthrough. He wanted them to pay their respects to the ACC Network broadcasters who would call the game that night.
“Jim Boeheim’s over there, for God’s sake,” Kelsey said, to himself as much as anyone else.
