Kenny Payne out as Louisville men’s basketball coach after a disastrous run with the Cards

The University of Louisville and Kenny Payne have parted ways, leaving the Cardinals’ historically significant men’s basketball program once again looking for a new leader to help guide the school back to its glory days.

Payne, formerly a longtime assistant to John Calipari at Kentucky, was fired from his first head coaching job by Louisville athletics director Josh Heird on Wednesday afternoon.

The firing came in the aftermath of Louisville’s 94-85 loss to North Carolina State on Tuesday in the first round of the ACC Tournament.

“Kenny has given a great deal to this university over a span of nearly 40 years, and he will always be a valued member of our Louisville family,” Heird said in a statement. “When we brought Kenny home in 2022, no one had a stronger belief than me in his potential success, but it’s become clear that a change is needed to help this program achieve what is expected and attainable. While it is always difficult to make a coaching transition, this is the right one for our program. On behalf of myself and everyone involved with our men’s basketball program, I want to thank Kenny for his dedication to U of L. I wish him and his family the very best in their future.”

Louisville has begun a national search for Payne’s replacement.

Heird spoke to media members in Louisville on Wednesday afternoon and said he wouldn’t use a search firm to help find the Cardinals’ next head coach.

In a disastrous spell in charge of the Cardinals, Payne went 12-52 across two seasons as head coach. This included a 4-28 record in the 2022-23 season, the most defeats in one season in program history.

Louisville finished last in the ACC regular season standings in both of Payne’s seasons as head coach.

Payne’s tenure as head coach featured embarrassing losses at home inside the KFC Yum Center to the likes of NCAA Division II schools Lenoir-Rhyne and Kentucky Wesleyan (exhibitions), and to Bellarmine, Wright State, Lipscomb, Chattanooga and Arkansas State in regular season contests.

It also featured more than 30 losses by double-digit points, and at least a dozen defeats by 20 or more points.

Louisville was also soundly beaten twice by UK and Calipari with Payne as the Cardinals’ head man: In 2022, Kentucky beat Louisville by 23 points in Lexington. In late December, the Cats beat the Cards by 19 in Louisville.

Payne, 57, signed an incentive-filled six-year contract to coach the Cardinals in March of 2022 at a base salary of $3.35 million per year.

The buyout called for Payne to receive $8 million if Louisville terminated his contract without cause — meaning NCAA violations or some other act beyond wins and losses — in Year 2. According to his contract, Payne’s buyout was set to drop to $6 million at the start of April.

Payne was paid the equivalent of $837,500 per victory during the 2022-23 season, and the equivalent of $418,750 per victory during an eight-win 2023-24 season. Overall, Payne was paid $558,333 per win at Louisville.

Losses piled up despite roster changes at Louisville

When Payne arrived back in Louisville — following time spent as an assistant coach at Oregon and Kentucky, as well as with the NBA’s New York Knicks — he was taking over a U of L program in disarray.

After Rick Pitino’s celebrated tenure ended in disgrace, the Cardinals went 63-36 in four seasons under replacement Chris Mack, reaching the NCAA Tournament only in his first year. Mack and U of L “mutually agreed to part ways” midway through his final season, which was the 2021-22 campaign.

Ahead of Payne’s second season at Louisville, the Cardinals’ roster took on a new look following a four-win season.

The Cardinals signed a top-10 ranked recruiting class, boosted by the additions of small forward Trentyn Flowers and center Dennis Evans.

In August, Flowers (who reclassified from the 2024 recruiting group) abruptly left Louisville to turn professional and signed with the National Basketball League in Australia. He never played for the Cardinals.

Evans (formerly a Minnesota signee) played sparingly for the Cards before the school announced in early January that he would “not be medically cleared to compete at the University of Louisville moving forward.”

U of L’s offseason transfer additions — small forward Tre White (Southern California), power forward Danilo Jovanovich (Miami) and guard Skyy Clark (a former UK commit who previously attended Illinois) — all either underwhelmed or were largely non-factors this season.

Clark scored a career-best 36 points in U of L’s ACC Tournament first-round defeat.

Another offseason pickup, former Los Angeles Southwest College guard Koron Davis, was the centerpiece of a bizarre in-season saga that ended in December with the Louisville program issuing two different statements about Davis: The first said Davis intended to leave U of L and transfer, while the second said Davis had been dismissed from the team.

Despite all of this, the Cardinals showed some moments of progress on the court this season: A pair of close losses in the Empire Classic in New York City to Texas and Indiana indicated that perhaps a corner could be turned, even after early-season defeats to Kentucky Wesleyan (exhibition) and Chattanooga.

But while the 2023-24 season has featured some bright spots — in particular the emergence of freshman guard Ty-Laur Johnson and the development of junior forward Brandon Huntley-Hatfield — the overall end product remained bad.

“I think that sometimes fans, critics, they look at something and they see it just in wins and losses, and not really fully understanding there’s young people that read, hear everything that people say,” Payne said following a 12-point home loss to Arkansas State in December.

“And that hurts them, because they trusted to come here.”

Another low-point in Payne’s U of L tenure came Dec. 21. In front of a crowd that was close to a 50-50 split between Kentucky and Louisville fans in the KFC Yum Center, the Cardinals were soundly beaten by the Wildcats, 95-76.

The 95 points U of L allowed to UK in that loss marked a new record for opposition points scored at the KFC Yum Center. As Calipari approached Payne in the postgame handshake line following that game, he offered an apologetic shrug to his longtime friend.

Postgame, Payne pointed to the progress he saw on the floor.

“I don’t know what the (UK) game was last year, to me I see segments where the gap is closing. The gap is closing,” Payne said. “And I don’t know if fans see it, you guys see it as media people, but the gap is closing.”

When Louisville won at Miami (Fla.) in January, the Cards snapped a 22-game road losing streak. This proved to be the only win of the Payne era that came away from the KFC Yum Center: Louisville went 1-28 in road and neutral-site games under Payne’s direction.

As the 2023-24 ACC season progressed, a common theme for the Cardinals became an inability to prevent high-scoring games from opposing players.

During a four-game stretch in February, U of L allowed a trio of opposing players to all score 30-plus points: Syracuse’s Chris Bell (30), Georgia Tech’s Miles Kelly (36) and Pittsburgh’s Blake Hinson (41).

The Cardinals ended the regular season on a seven-game losing streak, and lost in the first round of the conference tournament for the second time under Payne.

“What I inherited was broken. More than I could ever tell you, it was broken,” Payne told reporters Saturday following Louisville’s Senior Night home loss to Boston College. ”It wasn’t just basketball, it was broken. Beyond broken. OK. So when you walk into a situation like that, you’re not coaching basketball. ... Words can’t describe what it takes to get a player to feel good about who and what he is.”

What effect will Kenny Payne’s departure have on Louisville recruiting?

Payne’s hiring at U of L was celebrated as a connection to some of Louisville’s best seasons. He scored 1,083 points as a player for the Cardinals from 1985-89. He was a member of Louisville’s 1986 national championship team and followed his college career with a four-year NBA career with the Philadelphia 76ers.

Louisville was Payne’s first head coaching job, which came after a decade on Calipari’s Kentucky staff that included the Wildcats’ most recent national title in 2012.

With Payne unable to find success at Louisville, what is the immediate outlook for the Cardinals’ next full-time head coach?

Any concern that Payne’s departure could negatively affect Louisville’s 2024 recruiting class can be dismissed, plainly because the Cardinals have zero momentum on the recruiting trail.

Of the 16 players in the class of 2024 who hold a Louisville scholarship offer, 13 have already committed or signed to play at other schools.

Louisville’s lone commit in the 2024 recruiting class is three-star point guard TJ Robinson, who committed to U of L in October 2022. Robinson is still yet to sign with the Cardinals.

U of L did make the final list of post-high school playing options for 2024 small forward Karter Knox, but he recently committed to Kentucky, where Payne coached his older brother Kevin to become an 2018 NBA draft lottery pick.

The two other class of 2024 players with a U of L scholarship offer who are yet to commit are small forward Bryson Tucker and power forward Sekou Konneh.

Tucker is no longer considering Louisville.

In the class of 2025, two players with a UK scholarship offer — guards Meleek Thomas and Jasper Johnson — also hold Louisville offers. In the class of 2026, both the Cats and Cards have an offer out to Louisville native Tyran Stokes, who plays at a prep school in California.

The Cardinals are also in early on a pair of in-state class of 2026 prospects: Guard Taylen Kinney (Newport) and small forward Gabe Weis (Washington County).

All three of the assistant coaches Payne hired to recruit away from campus for U of L — Danny Manning, Nolan Smith and Josh Jamieson — are under contract with the school through April 2025.

After an NCAA rule change this year allowed for schools to now have up to five assistant coaches, Payne opted to give those two newly available assistant coach positions to people who were already part of the Cardinals’ program: Gabe Snider (director of analytics and video technology) and Milt Wagner (director of player development and alumni relations).

It remains to be seen what their futures are with the Cardinals.

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