Louisville Basketball Has Not Been This Bad Since The ’30s

The Cardinals put on yet another spectacular show on Saturday in Louisville, adding to the numerous that the team has produced over the previous two seasons. However, the men’s basketball team from Louisville is creating the incorrect type of history. According to Cardinals statistician Kelly Dickey, their 28-point halftime deficit against Virginia yesterday was their greatest since the 1938–39 season and their third-highest ever. The squad scored just 13 points in the first half of the game for the second time in recent memory. The game from yesterday did not get much closer. Virginia defeated Louisville 69-52 in the end, leading by 20 points until garbage time.

It has been quite the fall. In December of 2019, The Courier Journal wrote that Louisville was “the center of the college basketball world.” Chris Mack’s Cardinals were ranked No. 1. They finished tied for second in the ACC and were ranked No. 15 in the country when COVID ended the college basketball season.

Since then, Louisville’s trajectory has primarily been downward. In 2021–2022, Mack received a six-game suspension for his handling of an extortion attempt. Assistant Dino Gaudio, who had been informed that Mack’s contract would not be renewed, attempted to blackmail him with minor NCAA infractions. Mack reported the talk to the Louisville administration after recording it, but he was suspended for not “handling the matter in accordance with university guidelines, policies, and procedures.” (Louisville wanted to be in the clear.)clean following several incidents involving former coach Rick Pitino, including a staffer using prostitutes to sextort players, Adidas giving a recruit’s parent $100,000, and a woman Pitino had sex with. Following an 11-9 start that season, Mack lost the support of donors and the fan base, and in January 2022, he and Louisville came to an agreement to separate. He was regarded as having had one of the worst tenures of any modern-day squad.

Yet the program was still considered a prime college basketball job. When Louisville athletics director Josh Heird announced that the university had hired Kenny Payne, who won a national title with the Cardinals in 1986, to serve as head coach, he said, “The University of Louisville is a destination job and the strength of our candidate pool proved this out.”

Compared to Mack, Payne’s term as coach has been much worse. This season, he is 6-14, and the club is destined to finish worst in the ACC for the second consecutive year. Even yet, it is still better than the 4-28 record from the previous year, which began with nine losses and was regarded as the worst in contemporary history. In 1938–39, Payne was the only actual Louisville coach to have a worse record than him. Payne has a 10-42 score. Lawrence Apitz finished his four years with a 10-52 record, but to his credit, he also had to coach the football team. Payne’s chances of surviving to a third season are slim.

Several members of the media have demanded Payne’s termination, if only to end his suffering. A song called “Fire Kenny Payne” is played. In December, Matt Norlander of CBS Sports even reported that he was running out of time. Later, AD Heird announced that Payne would stay on as coach till 2023. It appears likely that Payne won’t be let go until after March 31, when his $8 million buyout will be reduced to $6 million.

The losses on the court have leaked off of it. At one press conference, Payne explained why Ty-Laur Johnson didn’t play in the first half of a game by saying: “I probably shouldn’t tell you this—we didn’t have the tights that he wanted, so he didn’t know if he wanted to play.” Louisville said Koron Davis intended to transfer, then later said he had been cut. Davis said he did not tell the university he wanted to transfer, and then sat in the stands to watch the Cardinals lose to Arkansas State. Davis told The Athletic in December the tension stemmed from an incident the previous month: “He told my teammates: ‘Koron said fuck all y’all.’ Things escalated from there, but never turned physical.” A teammate corroborated what Davis said.

The Cardinals have lost out on several prospects, but Payne’s first class was still ranked 26th by 247Sports, as Brendan Quinn noted in that report. Trentyn Flowers, a five-star prospect, left Louisville to play in the NBL in Australia for a year, yet 247Sports ranked his following recruiting class as the sixth best. After the team’s preseason exhibition loss to Division II Kentucky Wesleyan, Payne declared, “We’re never going to be the most talented team.”

The team has lived up to his quote. It does basically nothing well but get to the free-throw line. When Johnson finds his leggings, he is the only one who can distribute the ball. But he also averages just 3.2 assists a game. Mike James and Curtis Williams can shoot threes OK, but they each take fewer than four a game. Brandon Huntley-Hatfield shoots well, but takes just 3.75 shots a game. And the offense is the better side of the team. Louisville is 308th in the country in effective field goal percentage allowed. Even when Louisville scores a bunch, it usually gives up more.

Rick Bozich, a sports reporter for Louisville’s WDRB, said that Saturday’s loss was “beyond rock bottom… Worse than any words or statistics or analysis can communicate. Unacceptably bad. Incompetently bad. Hauntingly bad.” There are still 11 games left in Louisville’s season. Fans are going to get a chance to see if it can get any worse.