Louisville basketball is garnering Final Four hype entering Year 2 of the Pat Kelsey era.

Recent history suggests the Cardinals could go even further.

Every national championship game since 2022 has featured at least one program (five of the eight total participants) that lost in the first round of the preceding NCAA Tournament . Two of those programs cut down the net, Florida in 2025 and UConn in 2023; the three runners-up were Purdue in 2024, San Diego State in 2023 and North Carolina in 2022.

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