Kenny Payne

Louisville coach Kenny Payne talks to his team before taking the court for a game against Notre Dame in the KFC Yum! Center on Feb. 21, 2024.

 ERIC CRAWFORD

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The end is near. The University of Louisville men's basketball team has four regular-season games remaining, three of them at home after Wednesday's visit to No. 10 Duke (7 p.m., ACC Network).

It's the point of the season when improvement should pay off. After a front-loaded ACC schedule, it's the time of year when second-year coach Kenny Payne hoped to be making hay, not laying eggs.

Instead, his Cardinals have had some time to stew on a 22-point loss to Notre Dame last week. The Cardinals won back-to-back home games to start February, but those are surrounded by 10 losses (and an overall ACC record of 3-13).

It's not what the expectation was after a 4-28 season when everything seemed to go wrong. When asked Monday to name some areas of growth that make him most optimistic, Payne pointed to the development of several players.

"I think we've done things that prove that, when the program is where it needs to be, we can live in it," Payne said. "Basically, what I'm saying is, when you have five and six guys scoring double figures, when you score upper-80s, 90 points in a game, when you're playing at a pace that's entertaining, and you're watching the development of players. You know, Brandon Huntley-Hatfield, Mike James has gotten better. Skyy Clark is a good player. Tre White has gotten better. You see development in some guys, it just hasn't been consistent enough. When you're talking about rebuilding or building a program and building a culture, I think we've shown in small samples — and I'm not in any way satisfied with it — but we have done some things to show what we're capable of doing."

Payne has spent most of his college coaching career as an assistant to John Calipari at Kentucky, where success was expected and adversity came in the form of two-game losing streaks, not in large chunks of the calendar without victories.

In addition to navigating his first head coaching job, he's had to figure out a way to deal with on-court adversity, even as he has experienced — and borne responsibility for — poor results on the court.

He has said he's not worried about his future, only about helping his team improve. But he did say on Monday that the adversity of the season itself has posed a challenge.

"It's been very challenging," he said. "Again, I've used the statement all the time, and what I know now is that all this leadership talk, you hear from the perspective of everything is great. You know, they're winning. Very rarely are you in situations where you're listening to people that are in leadership roles and how do they lead when things are bad, when things aren't where they need to be. To me, knowing what I know now, that's the true form of leadership. Am I coming in here berating my players? No. Am I coaching them with love? Yes. Am I pushing them to be better every day? Yes. Am I accepting them giving me less than 100 percent? No. That's a challenge. When you see their insecurities, when you see that it's not just basketball, there's other factors involved in how young people perform, how they think, how this generation reacts to adversity. There's challenges when you're teaching young players to be more open to opening up so that they can be coached, so that they can be mentored, so they can learn. You know, this old adage of, 'You're never too old to learn,' is true. Some young people believe they already have all the answers. So, it's a challenge. Yes."

As the scrutiny on his job has increased, Payne said he's made it a point, particularly during the extended break between games in the past week, to talk individually with players.

"We've met with most of all the guys to sit down and talk to them about how they feel, how they're digesting this," he said. "What can we do different? What can they do different? We did a little bit of that. We talked about how important it is to finish this season off the right way. What we try to do is we try to make this a culture of work and honesty. Here's where we are, here's what we're trying to do. We want to win today. That's our motto. Take care of today. Give it all you got, even if it's a day off, let your mind get away from basketball but also let it reflect on the blessings that you do have in playing basketball at a university like this."

As for Payne, he's hoping to enjoy a few more blessings as his second season winds down. Wins, recruits, anything positive he can generate, as the debate swirls over how quickly the clock may be ticking on his tenure. 

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