CRAWFORD | Imari Berry spent her summer running toward a more confident version of herself

Louisville’s junior guard attacked her conditioning this offseason, believing a stronger body will help unlock the confidence her coach says can take her to another level.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WDRB+WAVE) — Imari Berry spent part of her summer in a place you wouldn’t necessarily go looking for a Louisville women’s basketball player.

The football field.

Sprints. Steps. Sleds. More conditioning than she thought she could handle. Working with conditioning coaches, she kept coming back for more, attacking the kind of workouts that don’t show up in a box score and aren’t generally associated with becoming a better shooter.

“We ran the football field. We pushed sleds,” Berry said. “We did some stuff that I didn’t know I could do, but obviously I did it.”

But Berry wasn’t really running to improve her jump shot.

She was running toward confidence.

For Berry, the two are connected, and it goes back to her freshman year, when she couldn’t stay on the floor.

Louisville women's basketball player Imari Berry runs outside the school's football complex during an offseason training session.(Haley Schoengart)

“I couldn’t stay in the game,” Berry said. “Especially if I got tired, I would just forget everything. Boom, I get scored on or I turn the ball over.”

Fatigue, in other words, was never just about her legs. Mistakes became harder to shake. A missed shot made the next one harder to take. Even last season, when her conditioning was no longer the issue, the cycle hadn’t entirely gone away.

“Last year, I messed up a couple times and I would get in my head and I wouldn’t shoot the ball,” she said.

That’s the cycle Berry wanted to break.

So she ran. She lifted. She pushed sleds. She worked on her breathing, on “not trying to bend over, get on my knees when I’m tired,” as she put it, and on simply controlling it.

And she played 3-on-3 basketball for USA Basketball, where there is nowhere to hide and little time to rest.

Somewhere along the way, Berry began building more than endurance.

Louisville senior Elif Istanbulluoglu noticed.

“Oh my God, her conditioning,” Istanbulluoglu said Monday at ACC Tipoff when asked where Berry had improved.

She remembered a very different Berry in conditioning drills.

“Doing up-and-downs like maybe twice, and she was dying,” Istanbulluoglu said. “You can ask her. It was like that.”

Not anymore.

“This summer, I remember every drill, she was like one of the tops, like first one, the second one,” Istanbulluoglu said. “It’s amazing how the work that she put in, now you can see the results.”

Louisville coach Jeff Walz hopes everyone sees more than that. He believes Berry has another level waiting for her if she can get one person out of the way.

Herself.

“She’s got untapped abilities,” Walz said. “She’s gifted. She glides. She shoots the ball extremely well. Now I just want to see that confidence day in and day out. I tell her all the time she’s the only one that can stop herself.”

It would be tempting to hear that and think Berry spent last season struggling.

She didn’t.

Berry averaged 10.9 points and 2.7 assists, led Louisville with 54 steals and produced 21 double-figure scoring games. She had three double-doubles. She led the Cardinals in scoring six times and in assists nine times. She became the ACC’s Sixth Player of the Year and earned first-team ACC All-Tournament honors, and she helped the Cardinals reach the ACC championship game and the NCAA Sweet 16.

Her image now hangs from the wall of Louisville’s practice gym, commemorating her ACC Sixth Player of the Year award. Not many Cardinals have had the experience of practicing beneath an oversized picture of themselves. Dana Evans did. Myisha Hines-Allen and Asia Durr did during their repeat ACC Player of the Year seasons.

“I didn’t realize how big it was until I’m actually on the wall,” she said. “Like I go in practice and I’m on the wall.”

Now comes the harder part: seeing herself that way without having to look at the wall.

The question entering her junior season isn’t whether Berry can play. She has always been able to play. She started getting Division I offers in the eighth grade.

The question is what happens if she begins playing with the same confidence every possession, every game, regardless of fatigue, a missed shot or a mistake.

That helps explain the unusual summer.

Berry played for USA Basketball in the 3x3 Nations League Americas Conference, a version of the game that provides little opportunity to disappear. Three players. Constant involvement. Little rest. Make a mistake and the next possession arrives almost immediately.

Walz believes that experience could matter for Berry in multiple ways.

“There’s no question it does,” he said when asked whether 3-on-3 could help her confidence. “I’m hoping some of that carries over. The conditioning from three-on-three is also another really good thing. And then you’ve got to rebound, you’ve got to defend. It makes you play an all-around game.”

It also demands something Berry has been trying to develop: a short memory. There is no time in 3-on-3 to spend several possessions thinking about the previous one.

That matters for a player Walz describes as humble to the point that “she’s always worried about what everybody else thinks.”

“And now,” he said, “I’ve got to get her a little bit past that to go out there and just do what you do.”

Berry has fought that instinct in other ways. She is, by her own description, goofy, and for a while she tried to be someone else.

“I tried to change myself to be more serious,” she said. “But being goofy and making other people happy and smile is just as important as being serious.”

Istanbulluoglu has watched her get more comfortable being herself, and louder.

“She’s more goofy,” she said. “I’m like, ‘Mari, you need to speak out,’ and I think she’s doing a better job at that too.”

Louisville women’s basketball players Imari Berry, left, and Elif Istanbulluoglu make a TikTok video during ACC Media Day in Charlotte, N.C.(ERIC CRAWFORD | Eric Crawford)

Then there’s the Duke game.

Louisville lost the ACC championship game to Duke 65-62 in overtime. Berry still watches it. Every day. She watches it with teammate Mackenly Randolph.

“Me and Mac watch it every day,” Berry said. “We could have rebounded the ball, and we could have got a couple more stops. But we can’t go back.”

There are presumably more pleasant ways to spend a few minutes.

But there is something revealing about the habit. Berry isn’t trying to forget the moments that bother her. She’s trying to learn how to respond differently to them.

That’s what much of her offseason has been about, and it matters on a Louisville team that Walz believes has scoring depth it didn’t have last year.

A dejected Imari Berry after the 2025 ACC Tournament championship game.(Eric Crawford)

Asked how many 3-pointers she’s going to hit this season, Berry didn’t hedge.

“Make it rain,” she said.

A year ago, by her own account, she sometimes wouldn’t shoot.

Now she’s promising a downpour.

She spent the summer trying to make sure the player who gets in her own way doesn’t show up.

On the football field. Behind a sled. One exhausting trip at a time.

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CRAWFORD | Imari Berry spent her summer running toward a more confident version of herself