Louisville’s Khani Rooths, Mikel Brown Jr. on South Carolina State win
After the Cards’ 104-45 win over South Carolina State, Louisville’s Khani Rooths and Mikel Brown Jr. talk about their mindset in games.
- Five Louisville players scored in double digits, led by Khani Rooths with a career-high 20 points.
- The Cardinals’ defense held the Bulldogs to 22.8% shooting and forced 25 turnovers.
J’Vonne Hadley broke Louisville basketball down on “Defense!” before Pat Kelsey’s No. 10 Cardinals ran out onto Denny Crum Court for the second half of Monday’s regular-season opener.
The KFC Yum! Center scoreboard read: U of L 59, South Carolina State 15 — per statistician Kelly Dickey, the program’s largest halftime lead going back to at least 1975, when his records begin. Defense, indeed. And before they broke it down on that, the members of Kelsey’s Year 2 roster were back in the locker room telling one another the score would be resetting for the final 20 minutes.
“It’s 0-0, no matter what,” sophomore forward Khani Rooths said. “It’s about the process. … We’ve got to work on playing through the whole 40 minutes — no let-up.”
Louisville did not take its foot off the gas during a 104-45 win over the Bulldogs, who averaged 79.5 points per game en route to a 20-13 record and a second-place finish in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference in 2024-25. The Cards jumped to a 13-0 lead within 3 minutes, 29 seconds and built the cushion up to 67 with 2:32 remaining in regulation. The 59-point margin of victory is the sixth largest in program history, per Dickey.
South Carolina State received $105,000 for participating in Monday’s season opener — the largest fixed guarantee of any nonconference opponent on U of L’s 2025-26 schedule. Money well spent? In the immediate aftermath of this bloodbath, Kelsey thought his team got better because of the consistency it showcased on both ends.
“It’s a great teaching opportunity,” the coach said. “You can win by 30 (or) 40 points and you could be really disappointed because you weren’t on the things that you value. We have an older group and a veteran group. I was saying it in the huddle, but they were kind of saying it before I even got there. (I’m) just proud of their mentality and how they continued to attack.”
S.C. State coach Erik Martin had to replace his five top scorers from his 2024-25 team — so it goes for successful mid-majors in the NCAA transfer portal era. But credit Louisville for making life hell for the visitors from the jump, surrendering a measly 0.577 points per possession.
Louisville basketball’s Pat Kelsey on beating South Carolina State
Louisville basketball’s Pat Kelsey shares his thoughts after the Cardinals beat the South Carolina State Bulldogs 104-45 in the 2025-26 season opener.
It took the Bulldogs until the 12:01 mark of the second half to cross the 20-point threshold. By that point, they were down 76-21. On the whole, Martin’s team made only 13 of its 57 field-goal attempts (2 for 19 from 3-point range) and committed 25 turnovers leading to 36 points for the Cards. Per Dickey, S.C. State’s 22.8% field-goal percentage was the lowest by a U of L opponent since Samford shot 21% in an 86-45 loss on Nov. 13, 2015.
“That was one of our (points of) emphasis coming into this game: be consumed by getting stops and winning battles on the defensive end,” freshman point guard Mikel Brown Jr. said. “That’s going to lead to easy buckets on the offensive end.”
Nine of the 10 scholarship players who took the court for Kelsey scored on a night when Louisville shot 53.2% from the field, 37.5% (12 for 32) from 3, tallied 23 assists on its 33 baskets and outscored the Bulldogs 42-18 in the paint. Of its 21 made 2-pointers, 11 were layups and 10 were dunks.
“It’s easy to all of a sudden start saying, ‘Oh, man, I want to get mine,'” Kelsey said. “We continued to give up good (shots) for great (shots).”
Five Cards broke double digits: Rooths (20), Isaac McKneely (17), Hadley (13), Ryan Conwell (12) and Brown (11).
For Rooths, it was a career high-water mark on 8-for-12 shooting (five dunks) in Game 1 of his sophomore year. Before Monday, the previous best for the 6-foot-10 Washington, D.C., native was 12 points on 4-for-5 shooting during a Jan. 21 win at SMU.
“(I’m) leaning on my work so I can have the most confidence in myself and just go out there and play and have fun and be comfortable,” said Rooths, who added seven rebounds, three assists, a steal and a block in 21:28 of run Monday.
“He’s going to be a dog; that’s how he’s been his whole life,” added Brown, who dished out a game-high six assists in his official collegiate debut. “Me and him have been going at it since we were middle schoolers; so to be able to have him on my side and know that he’s going to have my back is great.”
“He really does empty the tank,” Kelsey said of Rooths. “There are some times that — we were joking — it’s like he blacks out out there. He just plays to exhaustion; he’s just like coming over (to the bench) and his eyes are like rolling back a little bit.”
Up next for Louisville: one more tune-up game before archrival Kentucky comes to town, a 7 p.m. tipoff Thursday against Jackson State at the Yum! Center. The Tigers fell 113-55 at No. 14 Illinois on Monday.
Reach Louisville men’s basketball reporter Brooks Holton at bholton@gannett.com and follow him on X at @brooksHolton.
