LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- For the leadership at the University of Louisville, the issue of Kenny Payne's future long ago stopped being a basketball decision. It's now a business decision.
Even if it were a purely basketball decision, there is ample reason to believe that a third season as coach for the U of L alum is not in the cards. Payne's two-year record in the month of January is 1-15. Last night was his 21st loss in the KFC Yum! Center. That matches the number of losses U of L suffered in its first eight years in the building, combined.
At 12-47 (with 31 losses by double digits), Payne is flirting with finishing the season with a career winning percentage under .200. That's the Mendoza line, folks.
(And I know, there are some who will reference the mess Payne took over. But listen, whatever mess was or wasn't here, it has nothing to do with losing the opponent's best three-point shooter every trip down, every game. Nothing. I don't care how many guys had sex on their recruiting visits 10 years ago, it has no bearing on the ability to run the court in the here and now.)
But basketball, frankly, is only part of the equation. The other part is Section 307. That's where I climbed during the first half of Wednesday's 72-50 loss to Notre Dame. I was one of a handful of people in it, staring down on a less-than half full arena. To get to it, I walked through a concourse of concession stands with gates drawn. I passed red-coated ushers presiding over sections of empty seats.
An usher looks out on empty upper deck sections at the KFC Yum! Center during Louisville's 72-50 loss to Notre Dame on Feb. 21, 2024.
It's a ghost town up there. And it has been for three years, maybe more. It was before Payne, too, let's be honest. And the scanned ticket numbers tell us that the lower seats, while not that bleak, are nothing to cheer about.
Attendance problems are one thing if you play in your own campus arena. The losses then are contained to your own bottom line and maybe a couple of nearby businesses.
But when you're the anchor tenant of a taxpayer funded municipal arena downtown, your struggles are the city's struggles. COVID took a bite out of downtown. Civil unrest took another. Many office workers never fully came back from remote positions after COVID. Businesses contracted. Office buildings emptied out.
The last thing Louisville needs is an empty arena.
It's not personal. It's business.
I like Kenny Payne. Everybody seems to like Kenny Payne. I don't know anyone who knows him who dislikes him.
But I don't see how you sell tickets for Payne 3.0.
He has had a route to return. Win some games. Keep improving. Win some respect on the court. Add a couple of highly-ranked commitments off it. Maybe tweak the staff after the season.
An unused concession stand on the third level of the KFC Yum! Center during Louisville's loss to Notre Dame on Feb. 21, 2024.
I'm still not sure if it would sell, or if the kids would dance to it, as they used to say on the (really) old show, American Bandstand, but at least there would be a little something to look forward to.
But after all this team has been through, coming back home to play a Notre Dame team that has struggled in the ACC's cellar just as much as you have, to run through 40 listless minutes in a blowout loss on your court, that was a worst case scenario for Louisville and Payne.
It wasn't a worse loss than the DePaul loss. But it was close. And given the circumstances, timing and location, it may have been more damaging.
And Payne, God bless him, doesn't help himself in press conferences. When he called Mike James "a spirit animal," I liked it because it was colorful. Mike James, Petronas. It's cool. I like to picture my Mike James in a tuxedo T-shirt, because it says, "I want to be formal, but I'm here to party." I was with him. But Wednesday night, when Payne said that great players, "are going to will a guy to miss the shot," I couldn't quite get there.
Will? Will Scott? Will Olliges? What is this will? I've heard of will power and will to win and God's will and where there's a will there's a way and even a Last Will and Testament. But willing a guy to miss a basket? That's Obi-Wan Kenobi stuff, and while @lukeskywalka11 may be walking through that door from time to time, he's not willing anyone to miss a shot. At best, he might will them into the air with a little head fake from beyond the arc.
What in the name of Baby Yoda are we doing here? And where was I? Yes, Payne's future.
It would be nice if Louisville could afford to let Payne work on his "iron will" defense and chaos bundle offense, but it can't.
Entertaining as all that sounds, Kenny Payne, Season 3, The Return of the Jedi, is going to be a tougher sell than office space in the Humana Building. Plenty of vacancy, but little interest.
Empty sections of upper and middle deck seating in the KFC Yum! Center during the first half of Louisville's loss to Notre Dame on Feb. 21, 2024.
All week, I've been watching basketball. I watched Houston and Iowa State. I watched UConn and Creighton. And those teams, the game they're playing, is a different game than is being played by Louisville, which once played right with them, though that feels like a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
Think about that. Houston, UConn, those are Louisville's peer programs. The last time Louisville played UConn, it beat them by 10 to win the 2014 AAC Tournament, and that was a week after beating them 81-48 to end the regular season. And all that was in a national championship season for UConn.
These scenes in the KFC Yum! Center, sadly, are not Louisville basketball.
And the problem right now for anyone in Louisville's leadership that wants to stick with Payne and his staff and let them try to get this thing going the right way, is that those guys aren't the droids Louisville fans are looking for.
It's not personal. It's not even (entirely) basketball. It's business.
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