Josh Heird on evaluating Louisville basketball program under head coach Kenny Payne

Josh Heird needed only one word Friday to describe his evaluation process of Louisville men’s basketball head coach Kenny Payne.

Consuming.

“It’s consuming, what I’m doing right now,” Heird told reporters after a regularly scheduled U of L athletic association board of directors meeting. “And I know it’s consuming for Kenny and his staff as far as, ‘How do we get better? How does this basketball program get back to where we all expect it to be?’

“That expectation is a high bar,” he added, “but nobody’s going to run from that. We’re going to do everything we can to get this program back to where we all want, and expect, it to be.”

The Cardinals (6-13, 1-7 ACC) have done little to meet those expectations on the court since Heird last addressed Payne’s job status in December, when he told WDRB News’ Eric Crawford he’s looking for “some deposits in the bank.”

The 57-year-old Mississippi native enters Saturday’s game against Virginia with a 10-41 record at the helm of his alma mater. His team has showed some progress during a grueling start to conference play, but the results have been more of the same.

“I’m well aware that this program, this fan base, isn’t into moral victories,” Heird said.

When asked if he’s seeing any extra pressure placed upon Payne’s players to perform knowing he’s going through the evaluation process, Heird said he didn’t think that was the case.

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“As administrators, as coaches, as fans, I think we tend to overestimate how much they think about things. I’m not trying to minimize everything around them, but they’re college students,” he said. “At the end of the day, they’re college students. They go to class, they play basketball, they have personal lives — all those things.

“As much as we possibly can, we try to make sure that none of this gets put on their plate; and, for the most part, it’s not on their plate. They’re here to play basketball for the University of Louisville; they’re trying to do everything that they can for this program to be successful. Is it there? Absolutely, it’s there. But do they feel this weight of, ‘Hey, (what) if I don’t win this game or that game?’ I don’t think they feel that any more than they would any other season, quite honestly.”

There wasn’t much good news on the men’s basketball front during Friday’s ULAA board meeting, either.

Despite conservatively budgeting the program for 2023-24, it’s expected to fall short revenue-wise by around $2 million.

A copy of this year’s proposed budget, obtained by The Courier Journal last summer, forecasted a 2% ($315,800) decrease in men’s basketball revenue — from $24,285,100 (21%) in 2022-23 to $23,969,300 (19%).

“We knew that this was going to be another rebuilding year,” Heird said.

Attendance remains a problem at the KFC Yum! Center. Through Tuesday’s loss to No. 12 Duke, Louisville is averaging 6,344 scanned tickets per game this season. Average announced attendance, which an athletics department spokesperson said represents the number of tickets sold, is 11,636.

Those numbers are down from the 2022-23 campaign, which saw the Cards go 4-28. Average scanned ticket attendance then was 6,849; average announced attendance was 12,497.

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On Friday, the ULAA board approved a new season ticket price structure that will make each 2024-25 offering cheaper than they it was in 2023-24. Heird said something similar was done with football season tickets to account for the fluctuating amount of home games each year.

Here’s a look at the price changes listed in a copy of Friday’s meeting agenda obtained by The Courier Journal.