Thursday afternoon Cardinal news and notes

—U of L women’s basketball has officially added James Madison transfer Kiki Jefferson.

—TJ Capers, the highest-rated commit in the history of U of L football, will be in town this weekend and attending the spring game.

—KJ Bolden, the No. 9 OVERALL player in the class of 2024, will also be at Louisville’s spring game tomorrow.

Big-time weekend ahead for Jeff Brohm and company.

—Jack Payton is setting himself up to be (insider) Louisville’s latest early draft pick catcher.

—Kevin Sweeney of Sports Illustrated grades the college basketball hires of the current offseason, including a pair from the ACC.

—The transfer portal has changed the game across the college hoops landscape, including in the ACC.

1. The recently concluded 2022-23 season marked the highest number (six) and percentage (40) of major college transfers ever to receive All-ACC honors in the history of the 70-year-old league.

For the first half-century or so of ACC history, transfers — junior college or major college — only rarely developed into the best players in the conference. In most years, every single All-ACC player had joined the league directly out of high school or prep school.

Gradually, over the past two decades, that theme has changed, and major college transfers’ impact on the ACC reached unprecedented heights last season, when the modern-day transfer portal produced six of the 15 players (40 percent) on the league’s All-ACC teams.

As recently as 2017, 2018 and 2020, only one of the 15 All-ACC players (6.7 percent) in each of those three seasons had joined the league as major college transfers. That illustrates the massive shift in play here.

—Our own Keith Wynne is the guest on the latest episode of the From the Pink Seats podcast.

—The U of L men’s golf team will be the No. 6 seed for this weekend’s ACC Championship.

—Vanderbilt transfer Myles Stute, who had initially received interest from Louisville, is headed to South Carolina.

—Florida women’t basketball transfer Nina Rickards is headed to Louisville.

The 5’9 guard averaged 12.2 ppg for the Gators last season. She has one year of eligibility remaining.

—The start time for Louisville’s lacrosse game against Notre Dame today in South Bend has been changed to 4:30.

—The U of L softball team took down Western Kentucky in Bowling Green Wednesday night.

—In 2019, the members of The Athletic’s men’s college basketball staff embarked on a draft of the coaches who they thought would define the sport’s next decade. Four years later, they’re revisiting that draft.

Redraft pick No. 1

Bennett adds Duke’s Jon Scheyer and drops Chris Mack

Mack seemed like such a solid second-round pick in 2019, coming off a highly successful run at Xavier and heading toward a possible No. 3 seed in the 2020 NCAA Tournament That Never Was. Life comes at you pretty fast.

The top replacement pick is not entirely risk-free, as Scheyer has spent all of one season as a head coach. No one can say for sure how his career will go. But I was encouraged by how the Blue Devils improved as the 2022-23 season went on, and Scheyer — who turns 36 in August — won’t be going anywhere the next six years as long as Duke continues to win big. Given next season’s loaded roster and his continued recruiting prowess, that should be no problem. Since I had the last pick in the original draft, I went for younger guys with upside in the original draft, and Scheyer is the ultimate example of that.

—Miami QB Tyler Van Dyke is reportedly considering a transfer because of NIL frustrations.

—The latest episode of the 3rd & Central podcast talking Cardinal baseball is here.

—Former Cardinal Quinn Slazinski is following Rick Pitino from Iona to St. John’s.

—Some fresh Trentyn Flowers highlights:

—Reds star prospect Elly De La Cruz is off the injured list and should be making his Louisville Bats debut soon.

—Louisville Report has an NFL draft profile of Kei’Trel Clark.

—ESPN’s latest 30 for 30 podcast is “The Bag Game,” a 4-episode series that documents the impact of college basketball’s biggest pay-to-play scandal. You can hear all four episodes here.

—Nick Solak had quite the debut as a member of the Braves organization.

—U of L has offered class of 2025 defensive end Rashad Jones from Michigan.

—Louisville women’s basketball transfer Zyanna Walker is headed to Kansas State.

—And finally, Jeff Brohm will join the Mike Rutherford Show this afternoon at 3:30 on 1450AM and 96.1FM. You can stream the show here.