‘It felt really good.’ Louisville basketball dominates exhibition debut for Pat Kelsey.

The University of Louisville men’s basketball team tipped off the Pat Kelsey era with a resounding exhibition victory Tuesday night.

The Cardinals, aiming to restore order to their program in hopes of a return to college basketball’s blue-blood level, launched that effort by scheduling two games this week in the Baha Mar Hoops Summer League in Nassau, Bahamas.

Louisville hired Kelsey, the former head coach at the College of Charleston, to replace Kenny Payne this offseason. Payne’s two-year tenure as a first-time head coach resulted in a 12-52 record and more empty seats than anyone had ever seen in the KFC Yum Center.

Kelsey’s inaugural squad, assembled through the transfer portal much the way Mark Pope was forced to do after taking over for John Calipari at Kentucky, debuted against a team called Bahamas Select.

The free-flowing Cardinals, looking nothing like teams of recent U of L vintage, romped to a 111-59 victory .

“It was just good to play against somebody else,” Kelsey said afterward. “We’ve been beating up on each other for the last two months. We can put the uniforms on for the first time and be under bright lights and play a game for real. It felt really good. I was proud of our guys. You look at the stat sheet in a game like that, it’s easy to start playing ‘me ball’ and our guys didn’t do that. They continued to give up good shots for great shots and I was proud of them.”

The Cardinals started hot, scoring the first 13 points of the game. Nine of those 13 points belonged to fifth-year forward Kasean Pryor, a 6-foot-10 transfer from South Florida who netted back-to-back 3’s to open the night.

Louisville led by 29 points at halftime and by as many as 55 in the closing minutes of the game.

Seven Cardinals scored in double figures, led by J’vonne Hadley, who shot 8-for-10 from the field and finished with 18 points. Hadley is a 6-6 fifth-year guard who transferred from Colorado.

Louisville made 20 3-point baskets, shooting a sizzling 42.6 percent beyond the arc. The Cardinals recorded 38 assists on 43 baskets overall.

Pryor finished with 17 points, Koren Johnson (junior transfer from Washington) 15, Khani Rooths (freshman) 14, Reyne Smith (senior transfer from Charleston) 12, Aboubacar Traore (senior transfer from Long Beach State) 11 and Terrence Edwards (fifth-year transfer from James Madison) 10.

U of L wraps up its two-game set in the Bahamas on Thursday at noon against Canada’s University of Calgary.