Louisville Cracks CBS Sports’ 2024-25 Preseason Top 101 Teams

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – A sure sign that the college basketball season is on the horizon is the emergence of a variety preseason polls. The Associated Press Top 25 and USA TODAY Coaches Poll have already been released, and several more extensive preseason polls have begun to trickle out.

One such poll is the CBS Sports’ Top 100 and 1 college basketball teams, in which senior writer and college basketball analyst Matt Norlander – as the name suggests – ranks the top 101 teams in Division I basketball.

Louisville heads into the upcoming season as a team that many in national media have a hard time getting a read on. As a result, Norlander cautiously ranked the Cardinals at No. 83 heading into the 2024-25 season.

“Louisville fans aren’t looking for a lulu of a season, but they do think Pat Kelsey recruited a roster good enough to go from 12 total wins in two years under Kenny Payne to an NCAA bid in Year 1 of Kelsey,” Norlander wrote. “We shall see.

“As I said on the Eye on College Basketball Podcast last week, Louisville is among the toughest teams to peg in the ACC. Just an outright rebuild emerging from an awful situation. Working in Kelsey’s favor: His only season below .500 was his first as a head coach in 2012-13 at Winthrop (14-17). … I want to see how the pieces coagulate and I want to see if Kelsey can and does play as up-tempo with U of L as he did with Winthrop and Charleston.”

12 of the 18 teams in the Atlantic Coast Conference were ranked in the top 101, with Boston College, Cal, Florida State, Georgia Tech, SMU and Stanford not making the cut. Three ACC teams placed in the top 25: Duke at No. 5, North Carolina at No. 10 and Wake Forest at No. 12. Alabama, Houston, Kansas, UConn and Duke round out the top five.

With Louisville’s roster completely turning over following the end the of 2024-25 season, the national media at large has had a tough time gauging how good the Cardinals will be this season. Louisville was picked to finish ninth in the ACC by league media, but have been ranked as high as No. 3 in the league by The Athletic and as low as No. 11 by Jon Rothstein. They also received votes in the preseason AP Top 25, but were ranked No. 64 by KenPom and 63rd by Bart Torvik.

Not long after the end of Louisville’s disastrous 2023-24 campaign, one that ended in the dismissal of head coach Kenny Payne, the Cardinals’ roster began to flip. All 12 of Louisville’s scholarship players entered the portal, with only walk-on guard Aidan McCool in line to return.

In the weeks after his hiring on Mar. 28, new head coach Pat Kelsey and his staff did a fantastic job of roster construction. They’ve brought in 12 Division I transfers and one high school prospect, with their transfer portal class ranking No. 1 in the nation according to On3.

Louisville tips off the regular season against Morehead State from the KFC Yum! Center on Monday, Nov. 4.

(Photo of Chucky Hepburn: Nell Redmond/theACC.com)

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