Thirteen days shy of the first anniversary of his hiring, Louisville basketball coach Pat Kelsey sat in the Spectrum Center at the ACC Tournament doing something he usually tries not to in news conferences: reflecting on the bigger picture.
Kelsey was a staunch proponent of focusing on “the next thing” for much of the regular season. He doesn’t like to “get above the trees” (his words) very often, instead opting to focus on the team’s upcoming assignment. In this case, though, it was the first ACC championship game in program history.
“Gosh, it’s been a whirlwind of a year,” Kelsey said. “It’s coming up on 12 months since (athletics director) Josh Heird made that call to me and offered me the job to be the head coach at the University of Louisville. And when I say those words, I still can’t believe it’s real sometimes, and I get goosebumps on my arm.
“… When we accomplish things like this and have an opportunity to play for an ACC championship (Saturday), it kind of makes you feel like you’re doing your part, and you’re earning your keep.”
Louisville basketball fired head coach Kenny Payne on March 13, 2024, after back-to-back single-digit-win seasons — a stretch that felt like it drained the life from one of college hoops’ beloved blue-bloods. When Kelsey took the helm March 28, even the most optimistic fans couldn’t have predicted that he’d lead Louisville to one of the largest single-season turnarounds in high-major history. He more than tripled the Cards’ win total from the previous season, elevating U of L from a bottom-tier ACC team into the conference tournament’s No. 2 seed and earning the league’s Coach of the Year award.
His success has reinvigorated a community that ached for the return of great basketball. Enamored with Kelsey’s salesmanship and desperate to maintain such results, Cards fans have opened their wallets to U of L’s official NIL collective, 502Circle.
“Ultimately, fundraising is driven by emotions,” 502Circle President Dan Furman told The Courier Journal. “So the more that we win, and the more excited people are about what we’re doing, the more likely they are to invest and the entire thing.”
“This isn’t about Louisville basketball,” Furman added. “This is about the city of Louisville.”
How Pat Kelsey, Louisville basketball success inspire giving
On Jan. 1 with 6 minutes and 42 seconds left in the first half of Louisville-North Carolina, bright red lights coated the KFC Yum! Center.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a New Year’s treat for you tonight!” the P.A. system boomed. “Please turn your attention to the video board for a special announcement.”
Five-star Mikel Brown Jr.’s face flashed on the screen as he and his family walked toward center court. “Card Nation,” Brown said in a prerecorded message. “I’m all in. L’s up.”
Eleven-thousand fans roared and leapt to their feet to celebrate one of the highest-rated signees in Louisville history. Brown later said Kelsey’s revival (a.k.a “ReviVILLE”) of Cardinals basketball and the stellar point guard play of Chucky Hepburn inspired his commitment. But so did, surely, the seven-figure NIL deal he secured from 502Circle.
“As crazy as it is, agents are already contacting us,” Furman said of building Louisville’s 2025-26 roster. “…They’re watching what we’ve done. They’re watching the way our players are playing, the confidence that they play with, and the freaking swagger that we coach with.
“At the end of the day, it’s an attractive place to play basketball again.”
Kelsey and 502Circle are taking advantage of the hype.
German big Sananda Fru (6-foot-11, 245 pounds) committed to Louisville on Feb. 12, 13 games into U of L’s 19-1 streak to end the regular season. On ESPN Louisville, his agent Milan Nikolic specifically praised the Cards staff and collective for how they handled Fru’s recruitment. Five-star Nate Ament was in Charlotte, North Carolina, last week for the ACC championship between Duke and U of L — two of the power forward’s top five schools — sitting next to noted Louisville donor Scott Gregor.
The business aspect of college athletics is something Kelsey has always embraced. He grew up the son of a salesman (Kelsey’s dad Mike owns a car dealership in Indiana), and his first Power Five job was director of basketball operations at Wake Forest. At the College of Charleston, Kelsey fundraised more than $1 million, helping athletes secure NIL deals and helping himself land one of the best mid-major recruiting classes in the country.
Within 30 minutes of Kelsey’s introductory news conference at Louisville, Furman was on the phone with assistants Brian Kloman and Thomas Carr assembling a roster. Together they constructed one of the most experienced groups in all of college basketball (No. 5 in KenPom’s ranking), bringing hope and excitement to what had been an eight-win team last season.
“From the beginning, there was no hesitation to jump in and trust us,” Furman said. “… We literally built a team in 30 days, and none of us had met before.”
Kelsey’s hiring alone inspired record-setting engagement with Louisville’s collective. 502Circle reported it received the most recent enrollees on a single day, March 28 — Kelsey’s first day on the job. Furman said 502Circle has about 1,000 members whose contributions range from $25 to $500 per month.
Kelsey tries to give big donors unfettered access to the program so they can see the results of their gifts. Rick Kueber traveled to Syracuse, New York, with the team earlier this season and got to sit in on shootaround. Furman estimated that about 30 donors were in Charlotte to watch the Cards play in the ACC Tournament.
“They’re part of it, and they see the ups and downs, the emotions that come with this whole thing,” Furman said. “… Kels treats ‘em like gold.”
Donor fatigue and NIL
A major concern for administrators during the NIL era of college athletics is donor fatigue. Fans have long been asked to donate money for things including season tickets and facility upgrades. With the advent of collectives, some worried donors would tire of such frequent requests for giving.
The question became which giving ideology donors would embrace: and vs. or. Would they be willing to continue giving money to schools and embrace the idea of giving to collectives for the recruiting edge? Or would they opt for one over the other?
Collective donations and NIL deals are not public, and Furman declined to get into specific fundraising numbers. But schools are obligated to report contributions to the NCAA every fiscal year. An analysis by the Sports Business Journal in January found that most schools saw donations increase in football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball from 2019 (the last available fiscal year not impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic) to 2023.
This hasn’t been the case for Louisville.
During the 2019 fiscal year, U of L reported $19.3 million in men’s basketball donations, followed by $6.49 million for football and $403,052 for women’s basketball. In 2023, Louisville reported $15.7 million for men’s basketball. $5.45 million for football and $724,794 for women’s basketball. The latest numbers available for 2024 are as follows: $13.85 million for men’s basketball, $6.08 million for football and $410,010 for women’s basketball.
“Donor fatigue is real,” Heird told The Courier Journal. “It absolutely is.”
Since NIL became legal in 2021, and Heird was officially hired as AD in 2022, he’s had conversations with Louisville’s donors and fan base hoping to educate them about the fundamental differences between giving to a school and giving to a collective.
Big-time donors like the Kueber family — whose name has donned Louisville basketball’s practice facility since 2018 — have embraced NIL. Less than a week after Kelsey’s hiring, Rick and David Kueber announced they made a $1 million matching donation to 502Circle “earmarked for men’s basketball.”
“I think it’s safe to say a majority of our donors, once you have the conversation and really educate them, they get a lot more comfortable with giving toward NIL,” Heird said. “But you still have to remember, people are giving money that they earned to an entity, and that entity is either a university that’s been around for 200-plus years, or a collective that’s been around for 18 months or less.”
Furman doesn’t seem to have much trouble earning trust and money from Louisville’s fan base. Before taking over 502Circle in 2023, Furman served as the associate director of development for the Cardinal Athletic Fund. That experience allowed Furman to bring the network of donors he worked with at U of L over to the collective side of things.
When Louisville hired Kelsey in March of last year, Furman gained a willing collaborator.
As the revenue-sharing era of college athletics looms, and administrators including Heird look to determine how they’ll allocate money to athletes in different sports, folks at Louisville and 502Circle are trying their best to stay flexible. However things shake out, Kelsey will adapt, as he always has throughout his decades-long coaching career.
Furman summed up Kelsey’s style perfectly:
“Pat’s an old-school coach, old-school leader even. But he’s a new-school leader.”
Reach college sports enterprise reporter Payton Titus at ptitus@gannett.com, and follow her on X @petitus.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville basketball: Pat Kelsey, program’s success inspire donations
