Payne settled in for a postgame news conference at Madison Square Garden. There was a certain optimism to him that Sunday afternoon. He nodded and offered a knowing gaze. “It’s only going to get better,” he said. “It’s not going to get worse.”
It was difficult to imagine then how wrong he was.
The Cards lost to Indiana the next day. Then, uncomfortable home wins over New Mexico State and Bellarmine in a near-empty KFC Yum! Center. A loss at Virginia Tech. Another at DePaul, one of the few programs supposedly worse off than Louisville. Then, a home loss to Arkansas State. (Not Arkansas. Arkansas State.) Last weekend, a three-game skid was snapped with a win over Pepperdine.
That’s been the story on the court. Off the court, the place has come to feel like some cruel thought experiment on the long-term effects of fatalism. Fans are apoplectic. Program alumni are mortified. New embarrassments seem to come by the week. Most recently, fans went from talking about why freshman guard Ty-Laur Johnson sat out to start a game because he didn’t have his leggings to wondering what led to junior guard Koron Davis’ dismissal.
Louisville, as one proud former player puts it, is “utterly unrecognizable.”
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Payne returned to Louisville in March 2022 as a beloved alum. Beowulf, reclaiming his land to slay the dragons of this program’s recent past — the NCAA, the messy end of Chris Mack’s tenure, the cloud of Rick Pitino, the sordid headlines, the vacated wins, the dark days. All that would recede into memory as Louisville returned to glory.
But Payne, who wasn’t made available to The Athletic during a recent visit, went 4-28 in Year 1. Now he’s 5-6 in Year 2. The negativity surrounding the program is unmatched in college basketball. Most of it’s warranted. Some of it’s hyperbolic. Such toxicity turns every missed shot into a manifesto on the program’s future.
What’s most uncomfortable, though, is the seeming universal acceptance that sweeping changes are a foregone conclusion. That Louisville, operating as a bastardized version of a program with 10 Final Fours and three national titles (no matter what the NCAA record book says), is already past a point of no return with Kenny Payne.
At no time might that be clearer than this Thursday. Everyone knows what’s coming. The Yum! is about to turn blue as thousands of Kentucky fans take over the building for the annual rivalry game. It will be a sight no one can ignore, and the ultimate question again will be asked.
Where do the Cards go from here?
Touching down on one of the two runways at Bowman Field, the small airport southeast of downtown Louisville, Kenny Payne stepped out of a private plane and into an American dream. It was March 17, 2022. Denny Crum, his former coach, had lived long enough to see one of his own inherit his program. The 85-year-old waited on the tarmac alongside Wade Houston, another Cardinal legend and Payne mentor, both men smiling. Lowering his head, Payne ducked his 6-foot-8 frame through the plane door, inhaled a familiar air, hugged them both and waved to fans along a perimeter fence line.
This is what so many wanted. Louisville’s post-Pitino world was one of lost identity. Program alum David Padgett admirably navigated the tumult of 2017-18 as interim coach but wasn’t trendy enough to be the school’s long-term option. Chris Mack was the hottest name on the market, so Louisville went and got him. The marriage was hailed nationally as a can’t-miss hire in March 2018. Twenty-one months later, Mack coached the No. 1-ranked Cards to a home win over No. 4 Michigan in front of 21,674 packed shoulder-to-shoulder in December 2019.
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