Louisville enters the ACC preseason picture with some real respect attached.
The Cardinals were picked third in the league’s preseason poll released Tuesday, putting them behind only Duke and Virginia after a vote by a select media panel. Louisville also landed two players on the Preseason All-ACC teams, with junior forward Flory Bidunga earning First Team recognition and senior guard Jackson Shelstad making the Second Team.
Louisville is one of only four ACC programs with multiple players across the two five-man preseason teams. The others are Duke, Virginia and Miami.
Bidunga arrives with a decorated résumé. He is the reigning Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year after leading the conference in blocks with 91 and blocks per game at 2.6.
Those numbers ranked fourth and fifth nationally, respectively, during the 2025-26 season. The 6-foot-10, 235-pound forward, originally from Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, also shot 64% from the floor to lead the Big 12 and rank 10th in the country.
He posted four 20-point games, had 13 double-doubles and finished with averages of 13.3 points, 9.0 rebounds and 2.6 blocks per game.
His honors pile goes well beyond that. Bidunga earned All-Big 12 First Team and All-Defensive Team recognition, was a finalist for the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Center of the Year Award and appeared on both late-season watch lists for the Naismith Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year awards.
Before that, he set the Kansas freshman field goal percentage record by hitting 69.8% of his shots in his first college season. He blocked 54 shots that year, and his 1.6 blocks per game ranked third in the Big 12.
Shelstad brings his own proven production to Louisville after three seasons at Oregon. The West Linn, Oregon, native started 77 of 79 games in his Duck career and played in 12 games in 2025-26, averaging 15.6 points, 4.9 assists, 2.9 rebounds and 1.4 steals per game. He scored at least 20 points five times and handed out four or more assists in nine of those 12 outings.
As a sophomore, the 6-foot-1, 185-pound guard was named Third Team All-Big 10 after averaging 13.7 points, 2.9 rebounds, 2.7 assists and 1.0 steals. He had 25 double-digit scoring games, reached four-plus assists in 10 contests and knocked down multiple 3-pointers in 21 games for Oregon.
Shelstad also had a big NCAA Tournament showing against Arizona in the 2025 Round of 32, scoring 25 points on 9 of 14 shooting. That was the second-highest scoring game of his career, trailing only a 26-point performance against Northwestern earlier that same season.
His freshman year brought more recognition, too. Shelstad made the Pac-12 All-Freshman Team and the Pac-12 All-Tournament Team in 2023-24, when he averaged 12.8 points, 2.8 assists and 2.9 rebounds. He helped Oregon post the third-best assist-to-turnover ratio in the Pac-12 at 1.36 and finished that season with 23 double-digit scoring performances.
At the top of the league poll, Duke grabbed the preseason favorite tag with 45 first-place votes and 861 points. Virginia followed with one first-place vote and 778 points, while Louisville checked in third with one first-place vote and 758 points. Miami was fourth with one first-place vote and 753 points.
The rest of the top half of the poll had North Carolina at fifth, Clemson sixth, Florida State seventh, NC State eighth, Virginia Tech ninth and SMU 10th. Syracuse, Pitt, Stanford, Wake Forest, California, Notre Dame, Boston College and Georgia Tech rounded out the preseason order of finish.
The preseason player race went to Virginia’s Thijs De Ridder, who collected 30 votes. Duke’s John Blackwell finished second with 12, while Bidunga received three. Miami’s Malik Reneau got two and Duke’s Joaquim Boumjte Boumjte got one.
Boumjte Boumjte took the Preseason ACC Rookie of the Year award with 34 votes. Miami’s Caleb Gaskins had five, Duke’s Cameron Williams got four, North Carolina’s Maximo Adams earned three, and Clemson’s Harris Reynolds and Duke’s Deron Rippey each got one.
Louisville will get its first public exhibition game on Oct. 21 at Kansas, with ESPNU set to televise the matchup at 7 p.m. ET.
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