Mark Pope knows the importance of the Kentucky-Louisville rivalry because he lived it, playing in it twice and watching from the bench a third time as an incoming transfer. He knows the hatred blue has for red and red has for blue, passion that is permanently engrained in folks from Pikeville to Paducah.
“Kentucky-Louisville is a brawl, it is like brothers going in the backyard and getting after it. I love everything about it,” Pope told Kent Spencer of WHAS 11 back in June.
Pat Kelsey is different. As a Cincinnati native, he’s seen the rivalry closer than others, maybe, but he’s never experienced it. He played at Wyoming and Xavier during his college days, then served as an assistant at Wake Forest and Xavier — the latter under Chris Mack, who left for Louisville — before becoming the head coach at Winthrop (2012-21) and Charleston (2021-24).
This is new territory for him, so he’s trying to learn on the fly.
“I’ve learned more about bourbon since I’ve been here, more about horse racing and more about the Kentucky-Louisville rivalry than anything since I’ve been here,” Kelsey told Andy Katz. “I know how bitter it is and I know how important it is here. I’m so excited to be a part of it.”
He knows it’s a part of the job, what he signed up for when he made the move to Louisville. If you become a Cardinal, you’re joining arguably the best rivalry in the sport. And he’s learned quickly just how serious that commitment is.
“Well, rivalries are what makes college basketball great, man. It’s what makes sports great,” he said. “On a different scale, I grew up in Cincinnati and there’s an unbelievably bitter rivalry. I don’t know if you wanna say bitter because it’s a homes-divided kind of thing like it is with South Carolina and Clemson or Ohio State and Michigan. Louisville and Kentucky, man — it’s one of the greatest rivalries in our sport. This is a basketball-mad state, a basketball-crazy state.”
The issue? He can’t hate Mark Pope. He’s tried, but the guy he should be rooting to fail happens to be really, really nice. And their interactions have been awesome up to this point.
So he’s pretty conflicted.
“I want to not like Mark, but it’s hard not to because he’s a really good dude,” Kelsey said. “He came up to me and introduced himself. We started talking and I walked away like — Louisville fans might not want me to say this, so I apologize — ‘That’s a really good dude.’”
He compares it to the Crosstown Shootout when the late Skip Prosser and Bob Huggins managed to put their differences aside as rivals on the court at Xavier and Cincinnati, respectively, to become close friends away from it. Maybe that’ll be Kelsey and Pope?
“Skip Prosser and Bob Huggins had a very, very close relationship in one of the nastiest rivalries in the country with Xavier and Cincinnati, so I think there’s a possibility to have honor among thieves,” he said. “Maybe off the floor, we can like each other, and then try to tear each other’s face off when we square up head-to-head?”
That sounds like a plan for Pope as he heads into a new era of the rivalry.
“I love Pat, man. I actually love him. He’s a hard-driving, on it 24/7 guy. I love him, actually, and I’ve got a ton of respect for him. That’s the beauty of this Kentucky-Louisville deal, and he’s got a couple players that I love dearly,” Pope said “These are two guys I got to witness go sacrifice and grow and commit in a brilliant way. I love all of those dynamics because that is what Kentucky-Louisville is supposed to be.”
Don’t expect to see Kelsey throwing birds up at the Rupp Arena crowd on December 14, folks.
