The reports circled yesterday shortly after Payne’s 52nd loss in just two seasons as head coach that he would not be returning to coach Louisville for a third season and those reports all but confirmed the rumors.

This afternoon Louisville’s Athletic Director Josh Heird issued out an official statement that relieved Kenny Payne of his duties and began the process of finding the right man for the job yet again.

Louisville’s national coaching search will begin immediately, per the university, with some names already in mind. Today, the Cardinals main priority is Baylor’s Scott Drew, who still has plenty to play for as the season winds down for the Bears. The national championship winning head coach has built Baylor up from nothing and many speculate he won’t leave Waco, but Louisville’s resources should at least make him consider.

The next coach that’s buzzing around the Louisville job should Drew pass on it, is FAU’s Dusty May, whose recent success hasn’t been ignored on the national stage. May rose to the top of people’s coaching ranks after leading his Owls to a final four appearance a season ago, followed up by a 24-7 record this season in FAU’s first year in the AAC. What’s intriguing about May is his age, 47, which is fairly young for a head coach, especially if he were to coach at Louisville. It’s high risk high reward, with his roots at Indiana potentially becoming a problem, but if he worked out at Louisville, he could run a top program for a long time.

So the question of the day is, what went wrong for Kenny Payne at Louisville? Well, that question has numerous answers, not just one. Let’s start from the beginning, shall we? Louisville’s marriage with Chris Mack had an ugly ending, which resulted in a mutual agreement to part ways after the 2021-2022 season. Mike Pegues was honored to be the interim head coach for the remainder of the season and he did the best he could to win games and rally the troops.

That led to a short-lived coaching search after the season, because just about everyone around Louisville’s basketball program had their minds set on one man, Kenny Payne, the former Louisville Cardinal from 1985-1989, who went on to be a first round draft pick as well. In hindsight, the hire made so much sense, because Payne was labeled as a successful assistant coach at the college level at Kentucky, and at the pro level with the New York Knicks for a few seasons. Payne was always known for his ability to recruit at a high level, being the top recruiter in the entire country for many seasons under John Calipari and his ability to develop relationships with kids beyond the sport of basketball.

The only thing that went against Payne was actual experience as the head coach and not an assistant. Prior to accepting this job, Payne has zero head coaching experience and that eventually showed when he took the court. If you go back to his opening presser as he was officially introduced as the next head coach of Louisville, everyone and I mean everyone was in favor of Josh Heird’s decision, that includes the same fans that Payne recently blamed for his lack of success here, so that statement was absurd. A lot can change over the course of two years, because we couldn’t have been happier with the hire and many people called it a “home-run”, including Kentucky governor Andy Beshear. However, this hire went on to be one of the worst decisions that this program has made in a long time and the results show.

Firstly, the first red flag that appeared was Payne’s initial stance on NIL, which was that he wasn’t on board with the way college basketball was changing as far as recruiting and pay for play goes. Payne said that he didn’t want to have a “transactional” relationship with kids and that he wished it was like before NIL changed the landscape of college sports. The bottom line is, if you’re not on board with the current state of college basketball, which includes NIL, you won’t have success and that’s just a fact. Times have changed and his inability to adapt was the first misstep in this situation.

That same offseason, Payne had the chance to utilize NIL to get big named talent to Louisville in his first season, but he refused to do so. Everyone seems to forget that more than half of Louisville’s roster entered the transfer portal after that season concluded and Payne had to do his damage in the portal, because it was too late to do late recruiting for high school kids, many of them being signed elsewhere already. Texas guard Tyrese Hunter was strongly considering Louisville, as well as Cleveland Cavaliers’ Emoni Bates, the former number one player in the class of 2021. Payne, again refused to use his resources and both of those highly touted players took their talents elsewhere.

Payne rounded out his roster by picking up Brandon Huntley-Hatfield from Tennessee, TSU’s Hercy Miller, both via the transfer portal. He then reached out to NBA Academy in Africa to pick up Nigerian center Emmanuel Okorafor, followed by late commitments from unsigned high school players Devin Ree and Fabio Basili. No one expected Louisville to be some elite team in Payne’s first season, but it was expected that Louisville would be a respectable team and they’d be ready to make a leap in his second year.

As we all know, Louisville finished with an abysmal record of 4-28 that season and a Division II loss to Lenoir-Rhyne on their own court in an exhibition game. That right there was a telltale sign that Payne would have some struggles coaching at this level, because no matter who’s on this roster, that’s flat out inexcusable to lose to a Division II team at the KFC Yum! Center, it just doesn’t happen. Even after that loss and a record of 4-28 in his first season, Josh Heird gave Kenny Payne another year to prove himself worthy of this job and an entire offseason to mold his roster the way he wanted to.

Payne did just that, as once again, more than half of his whole team entered the transfer portal. This time, he knew that the portal was going to be his best shot at getting players who were already proven, or at least that’s what we thought. Payne brought in Skyy Clark, Tre White, Koron Davis, and Danilo Jovanovich via the portal, with Ty-Laur Johnson, Kaleb Glenn, Curtis Williams, Dennis Evans, and Trentyn Flowers all top 100 players coming out of high school. Before the season even began, Flowers, the highest ranked recruit out of any of their high school additions, opted out to go play professional basketball in Australia for the Adelaide 36ers. This was a huge loss for the Cardinals, who obviously could’ve used him this year.

It’s not that hard to make the case that even with doubling his win total from four to eight, this season was just as bad as last season, maybe worse. Louisville opens this season with a lot more promise than a year before, because the roster was more suited for Payne’s play style, but something still wasn’t clicking from within. Louisville started off this season with another Division II exhibition loss at home, this time to Kentucky Wesleyan. Make that back to back years that Payne lost to a Division II team to begin a season, which was another telltale sign that we were in for a bumpy ride this year as well.

Payne began deflecting the blame on just about everyone else, but himself, which made it all the more worse as he’s setting an example for his own team. He refused to take some sort of blame or accountability for the product that was being put out there and he did it for the entirety of this season. The excuses ran out fast and people were jumping off the titanic, as he would describe it, but no one in their right mind stays on a sinking ship. The fans of this city want to win more than anything and they’ll be critical of you if you’re not pulling your weight. Payne’s press conference's started to become unbearable as he made ludicrous statements about his coaching, his team, and the current state of Louisville basketball.

The whole Koron Davis situation is evident that there’s a disconnect between the players and the head coach, so much so that it showed up on the basketball court in every game. His own players disagreed with his decision, so they took it to Josh Heird instead of accepting it, which showed that they were indeed not on the same page. In his two years of coaching Louisville, nearly every time he had an opportunity to make something right, Payne did the exact opposite, and at times he made it worse. From blaming his players inability to learn, to coming out and saying Ty-Laur Johnson didn’t have the right tights to play, everything from start to finish played a major role in why Payne was fired today.

His final game resulted in a loss against NC State yesterday and after the game, Payne had some interesting comments to say the least. Payne essentially blamed the fan base of Louisville for their criticism of him and his players over the course of the season, said that it made his job “impossible”. Payne also said that “I’m not gonna let you blame me, I’m not standing up here by myself. I need all of Louisville with me.” When Payne was hired, he literally had all of Louisville with him, from former players, to fans, to everyone within the program, he had everyone’s support from day one. Seems like he took that for granted and forgot how he was named head coach so quickly. To not shoulder any of the blame for this mess is just asinine on Payne’s part, but it’s all over with now. If everything that went wrong with Kenny Payne was added into this piece, it would be never ending, seriously.

Payne finished with a record of 12-52 at Louisville, 5-37 against ACC opponents and more 20 point losses than total wins in just two seasons. That’s extremely hard to do. All these debacles are the reasons why it never worked out between Payne and Louisville and why they have a head coaching vacancy once again.

This time, the decision made by Josh Heird must be a correct one or Louisville may not ever get back to the top of the college basketball mountain again.