Getty Image / Andy Lyons
It wasn’t that long ago where Louisville was one of the proudest and most successful programs in all of college basketball. Now, they are a laughingstock.
The Cardinals lost to a bad Arkansas State team, 75-63, at home on Wednesday, and everyone is calling for head coach Kenny Payne’s job.
Payne was hired after the team fired Chris Mack following the 2021-2022 season. The Louisville grad and longtime Kentucky assistant under John Calipari was viewed as a home run hire at the time of his hiring.
Saying that the hire was a strike out instead of a home run would be an understatement. The Cardinals went a horrific 4-28 in his first season last year. That’s unfathomable for a program of their resources.
This year has been only slightly better, and certainly hasn’t come close to showing the improvement needed. After the loss to Arkansas State, they’re just 4-6.
The second half Wednesday night was especially bad. Louisville had a two-point lead at halftime, which isn’t great, but it’s still a lead. They were outscored by 14 points in the second half by the Red Wolves, though, with players showing a significant lack of effort.
This looks like another lost season for the Cardinals. I’m all for giving a coach a chance to build something as long as they are showing progress towards actually building it. This is not that. They’ve already lost to Chattanooga and Arkansas State. The team even dropped an exhibition to Kentucky Wesleyan. That’s far below the standard of one of the top ten programs in college basketball history.
If you search “Kenny Payne” on Twitter, you will see a lot of anti-Payne tweets. At this point, how could any Louisville fan or neutral observer support him staying on as the team’s head coach? Here are a couple of tweets that illustrate just how much of a dead man walking he was.
Final: Arkansas State 75, Louisville 63. No effort, no heart, no cohesion, no leadership. Total failure. Kenny Payne's tenure should have ended last year and assuredly will end this year. Just a matter of when.
— Pat Forde (@ByPatForde) December 14, 2023
If Kenny Payne were a firefighter, he would have backed the truck through the side of the station, started an electrical fire, and doused the fire with gasoline, which, in turn, burned the entire village to the ground.
— Erik Haslam (@haslametrics) December 14, 2023
Louisville is scheduled to play Pepperdine on Sunday. It’s unclear if Kenny Payne will still have a job.