Louisville’s best basketball player is transferring to the SEC for next season

In a college basketball season filled with disappointment and defeat for Louisville, one of the few bright spots was the play of El Ellis.

The veteran point guard will be playing next season in the Southeastern Conference.

Ellis announced Monday afternoon that he is transferring to play for the Arkansas Razorbacks for the 2023-24 season, which will be his final year of college. Ellis played the past two seasons at Louisville and spent time at Tallahassee (Fla.) Community College before that.

The Cardinals went 4-28 this past season — the program’s first under new head coach Kenny Payne — and Ellis was the team’s leading scorer and passer by a wide margin. The 6-foot-3 guard averaged 17.7 points and 4.4 assists per game, the only player on the team with more than 10 points or one assist per game. He also took the most shots of any Cardinal, by far, putting up 461 field goals and 185 three-point attempts. Mike James was next in both categories, with 234 and 98 attempts, respectively.

The Cardinals also lost forward Jae’Lyn Withers, the team’s top defender this past season, to North Carolina via the transfer portal last week.

Ellis is the fifth transfer to join Arkansas’ incoming class of 2023, and Razorbacks Coach Eric Musselman has been a prominent utilizer of transfers to build his rosters over the past several years, even before the recent “free transfer” era allowed players to play at their new schools right away.

The Razorbacks already have transfer commitments from Temple shooting guard Khalif Battle, Houston point guard Tramon Mark, Washington point guard Keyon Menifield and Cincinnati shooting guard Jeremiah Davenport.

247Sports already ranked Arkansas at No. 1 in the national transfer rankings leading into Ellis’ announcement. Mark and Battle are both in the top 25 on CBS Sports’ most recent list of the best transfers for this offseason. Last week’s (very early) 2023-24 rankings update from CBS Sports has the Razorbacks at No. 12, one spot ahead of Kentucky. The only SEC team ranked higher than those two was Alabama at No. 7 overall.

Musselman has also signed two top-25 national recruits — center Baye Fall and point guard Layden Blocker — for the 2023-24 season. Arkansas has been to three consecutive NCAA Tournament Sweet 16s, the program’s first such run since 1993-95, when the Razorbacks won the 1994 national title and then finished as the NCAA runner-up the following season. Arkansas advanced to the Elite Eight in 2021 and 2022 before falling in the Sweet 16 this year.

Ellis, who turns 24 years old in December, has declared for the NBA Draft, but he is not on ESPN’s most recent list of the top 100 draft prospects for 2023. He was considered the No. 1 junior college player in the country when he committed to the Cardinals two years ago.

Louisville is also reshaping its roster for the 2023-24 season, with former Kentucky signee Skyy Clark as its top transfer so far. Clark, who played part of last season at Illinois, is No. 15 in the CBS transfer rankings. The Cardinals also have five high school recruits for next season, a group that includes four top 100 national prospects led by small forward Trentyn Flowers (No. 31 in the 247Sports composite rankings), 7-footer Dennis Evans (No. 38) and Louisville native Kaleb Glenn (No. 69).

U of L has also been linked to Mackenzie Mgbako, long ranked as one of the top recruits in the 2023 class. Mgbako recently announced that he was backing off of his commitment to Duke and would look at other options for next season, with the Cardinals emerging as perhaps the frontrunner — among college possibilities — due partly to his previous ties to Louisville assistant Nolan Smith, who was formerly on the Duke staff.

Mgbako is the No. 7 overall recruit in the 2023 class.