2024-25 Indiana non-conference opponent preview: Louisville

  • 08/21/2024 1:08 pm in

Indiana’s 2024-25 non-conference schedule was finalized on July 9 and Inside the Hall will have a team-by-team look at each opponent. Today: Louisville.

The Battle 4 Atlantis bracket was announced Wednesday morning and Indiana’s ninth non-conference opponent for the 2024-25 season is confirmed: Louisville.

The Cardinals are coming off two horrendous seasons under Kenny Payne, finishing 4-28 and 8-24 in his two seasons at his alma mater.

Payne was dismissed shortly after the conclusion of last season, a campaign in which the Cardinals finished just 3-17 in ACC play and No. 185 in KenPom. The Hoosiers and Cardinals locked horns last season in New York, with Indiana prevailing in a closer-than-expected 74-66 victory. IU leads the all-time series with Louisville 12-9.

With Payne’s dismissal, Louisville struck out on several of its coaching targets and settled on Pat Kelsey, who reached the NCAA tournament in back-to-back seasons at College of Charleston. The Cardinals turned over their roster entirely in the offseason and there are no holdovers from the Payne era.

Louisville did have the offseason luxury of taking a foreign tour to the Bahamas, where it easily won a pair of games in the Mar Hoops Summer League. The Cardinals beat Bahamas Select 111-59  and the University of Calgary 111-71.

Louisville’s rotation will consist of ten new players from the transfer portal and a freshman, Khani Rooths, who previously committed to Michigan.

Kelsey’s teams at Charleston and Winthrop thrived on the offensive glass, grabbing at least 33.6 of their missed shots in each of the last five seasons. In four of those five seasons, Kelsey’s teams ranked inside the top 18 nationally in offensive rebounding percentage.

Wisconsin transfer Chucky Hepburn, a senior, should be the starter at point guard after averaging 9.2 points and 3.9 assists for the Badgers last season. The 6-foot-2 guard was never a star in the Big Ten, but he was a steady contributor on both ends.

In the Bahamas, Louisville started Aboubacar Traore and Terrence Edwards Jr. alongside Hepburn and brought guards Koren Johnson and Reyne Smith off the bench along with wing J’Vonne Hadley.

Traore, another senior, is a 6-foot-5 athlete from Long Beach State who averaged 12 points, but isn’t much of a shooter. He will, however, use his athleticism on the defensive end, which will likely draw him some challenging assignments on the wing throughout the season.

The go-to scorer could be Edwards Jr., a fifth-year wing who averaged 17.2 points last season at James Madison and shot 34.3 percent on 3s. In late-shot clock situations, there’s a good chance Edwards Jr. will be the one going to get a bucket.

Johnson, a senior, arrives from Washington and was briefly mentioned as a potential Indiana target last spring. The 6-foot-2 guard connected at a 37.3 percent clip from deep for the Huskies. Smith followed Kelsey from Charleston, where he averaged 12.8 points and shot 39.4 percent from distance.

Hadley is a fifth-year wing who averaged 11.6 points, six rebounds, 2.4 assists and 1.2 steals and shot 41.7 percent last season at Colorado.

The aforementioned Rooths is the youngest scholarship player on the roster and the only freshman on the team. The No. 34 player in the 2024 class, Rooths is a 6-foot-8 forward with plenty of long-term upside.

Up front, South Florida transfer Kasean Pryor and Charleston transfer James Scott started in the Bahamas, with Noah Watterman (BYU) and Frank Anselem-Ibe (Georgia) logging minutes off the bench.

Pryor is a 6-foot-10 fifth-year player who averaged 13 points and 7.9 rebounds last season for the Bulls. The 6-foot-11 Scott is just a sophomore but averaged a solid five points, 3.4 rebounds and 1.3 blocks last season while shooting 79.2 percent from the field.

Watterman is a sixth-year big man who loves to step out on the perimeter, where he connected at a 37 percent clip last season. Anselem-Ibe will serve as a depth piece at the five as a fifth-year senior who played sparingly last season in the SEC.

As we wrote recently, Battle 4 Atlantis is crucial for Indiana’s non-conference resume. The Hoosiers don’t have much meat on their schedule outside of this event, with South Carolina as the only high-major opponent coming to Assembly Hall before Big Ten play.

Louisville is a formidable matchup and has the potential to become a quad-one game on the resume if the Cardinals reach some of the lofty expectations they’ve been given in the preseason. The 3-Man-Weave recently ranked Louisville No. 34 in the preseason, and The Athletic picked the Cardinals to finish third in the ACC.

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