Louisville Basketball: 3 biggest questions heading into 2023-24 season
By Caleb Hall
2. Will the roster gel together?
One the biggest questions for any team that is having any kind of roster rehaul will be if the team will play well together. Teams like last year’s Missouri team that Dennis Gates put together proved to work as he took them to the tourney. However, teams like last year’s Louisville proved to have disastrous consequences.
Louisville will bring back some players from last year’s roster who were important like Brandon Huntley-Hatfield, JJ Traynor, and Mike James. Payne also brought in 8 new players from the transfer portal and new recruits he brought in from the overall class. The talent is there, but the ability to play well together is completely up to Payne and the players.
The Louisville community will rally around this team but if the players can’t win basketball games together Louisville will start to turn on Kenny Payne and the product he is putting on the court.
This also isn’t all on Kenny Payne. Payne can line up the players to play and run the best sets that they can, but if they can’t execute together effectively then it is ultimately on them. However, all the blame will eventually turn to come back around onto Payne.
This team can play well together, but we won’t know until they start playing basketball in early November.