University of Louisville freshman guard Mikel Brown Jr., is entering the 2026 NBA draft, he told ESPN’s Andscape.
Brown averaged 18.2 points, 4.7 assists and 3.3 rebounds in 21 games for the Cardinals during the 2025-26 season. The 6-foot-5, 190-pounder missed 14 games due to a lower back injury, including the NCAA tournament and Atlantic Coast Conference tournament. ESPN’s Jeremy Woo predicted Brown to be a seventh overall pick in the draft in his latest projection on March 11.
“Obviously, it’s just been a dream of mine to be able to be in this position,” Brown told Andscape. “The little kid in me would freaking scream just to know that I have an opportunity to play at the highest level, which has been a dream of mine since I started picking up a basketball. So yeah, I’ll be taking that next step.”
Brown — an All-ACC third-team selection — scored a season-high 45 points against North Carolina State on Feb. 9 and was named Associated Press Player of the Week after the performance. But he believes his breakthrough performance was scoring 29 points in a 96-88 win against in-state rival Kentucky on Nov. 11, 2025, the third game of the season.
He has been hampered by a strained back since November and last played on March 28. After being sidelined for over a month, he said he probably returned to action too early when he played against Virginia Tech on Jan. 24. He played in 11 more games, including the 45-point outburst against North Carolina State, before being sidelined indefinitely due to the back issue.
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Brown told ESPN Andscape he is working out and receiving treatment daily and plans on working out for teams in the draft process.
“As a competitor, it just hurt and it just ate me up inside that I just couldn’t go out there and battle with the guys,” said Brown, who will be represented by Seros Partners. “So, I came back, played those next, 11 games, did better. Sitting definitely taught me a lot, allowed me to see the game from a different lens and to be able to go back and apply it. It definitely helped me in that 11-game stretch.”
The injury also forced him out of the ACC and NCAA tournaments, because he says he wasn’t near full capability.
“[My back] really was messed up, but I just kept trying to play through it. And then eventually it just led me to the decision that I wasn’t going to play in the tournament — both tournaments, the ACC tournament and the NCAA tournament — just because I’m not trained to go half-speed at all,” he said. “I always want to go full speed in everything I do, whether that’s me working out to whether that’s me playing a game. And I just wasn’t able to do that at the time. So, I just felt like it was best for me to just sit out.”
