LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- If I were Louisville coach Kenny Payne, I might start treating every press conference like a Congressional hearing. Have counsel sitting there beside me. The question comes in, lean over, confer. You know the drill.
The last thing you want to do when your record is 6-11 and you just lost to North Carolina by 16 in Chapel Hill is to be brutally honest. That's not going to go well. You want to be Rick Pitino and tell people how f-ing mad you are, have at it. Otherwise, take the Hippocratic oath: "Do no harm." Be painfully boring. Write out a set of Crash Davis note cards and stick to them.
Whatever you thought of Louisville's performance against North Carolina — and there were some redeeming moments in the Cardinals' second-half comeback from a 20-point deficit — it was probably replaced when you heard Payne's answer to a C.L. Brown question.
The question was this: "There's certainly parallels between you and (UNC coach) Hubert Davis taking over your alma maters and not having previous head coaching experience. I'm not asking this as in, campaign for your job, but how long is enough time for a coach to establish what you want to establish?"
Payne's answer was this: "Well I didn't inherit the same thing he inherited. That's first. What I inherited was a broken something. And my job is to clean it up. And to answer your question, I don't really know exactly. But to me – and this is to me, in my world – inheriting what I inherited, this is really year one for me. Because this is the first time I get to bring my players in and start the process of rebuilding a program. But that's just to me. Other people may see it differently, I don't know. But that's how I feel about it. I wish I inherited something similar to what Hubert inherited because I think he started out slow but as the year went on, he had a great year."
Now, you see, if counsel is sitting there, it's an immediate consultation. It's the manilla folder raised up, then Payne emerges and says, "Well, Hubert has done an outstanding job and he's been a good resource to me and someone in this business I appreciate. That's a tough question because every program is different. We had some unusual challenges in this situation at Louisville, and we had setbacks and we all were disappointed with the season. And we haven't always played as well this year as I would have liked, but I've told my players, 'No looking back. And no more steps backward.' And I'm going to hold myself to that. We're playing better now – not as well as we want, but better – and I'll let others make the comments on time and all that, because they're the ones making the decisions, anyway. For me and my staff and players, every night we come out with a record of 0-0 and we're just trying to win a game."
Instead, Payne says what he says, and I have to write what I write. I don't care if that's how you really feel. I don't care if that's what you really believe. I don't care if you have it embroidered onto a golf shirt. You're probably best advised not to get up there and say it after a double-digit loss on the road.
(And let's also acknowledge this. North Carolina didn't have to show any real patience. Before it could get a good gripe session going in Davis' first season he had made the NCAA. Championship. Game. He hung a banner. In year one. What? He went 12-6 to start? Try four wins all season. Think UNC would've been patient with that? It's not really an apt comparison.)
Payne did inherit something of a mess. That much I can agree with. The Chris Mack extortion thing and suspension. His midseason departure. A team that finished the prior season with 15 losses in its final 18 games. You'd better believe it was a mess.
But given plenty of run-up time to taking the Louisville job, the best recruiting class Payne could muster was Brandon Huntley-Hatfield, Hercy Miller, his son, a Mack commit (Kamari Lands) and Fabio Basili and Devin Ree. I do think he met resistance that may have surprised him. I think pipelines he thought he might tap were dry when he actually pursued them, not entirely through his own fault.
So, for whatever factors (and there was the NCAA cloud), what Payne inherited was what he had. Six of his top seven scorers were part of that inheritance.
For a coach who was hired more on his ability to get great players than to develop them, it was a troubling start.
It doesn't matter what you want to call that season, year zero, as Payne considers it, or year one, as those of us on the Gregorian calendar count it, they still only won four games and were historically bad on the way to 28 losses. And Payne did little to change the course of that crashing train or to extinguish the burning dumpster. At the end, most of the top Mack holdovers departed, including one (Jae'Lyn Withers) who posted a double-double against the Cardinals on Wednesday night.
In year two (or year one in the World of Payne), he signed as solid a freshman class as has been here in a while. All of these players are keepers: Ty-Laur Johnson, Curtis Williams, Kaleb Glenn, all of them. Dennis Evans was too, before he was sidelined by an undisclosed medical issue. Beyond that, Skyy Clark and Tre White are all right. He also signed Koron Davis, who never played in a game but still attends games and sits in the stands. And he signed Trentyn Flowers, the most talented of the newcomers, who didn't even make it to the start of practice before bolting in favor of a pro career in Australia.
Meanwhile, a couple of guys everybody thought you might get are putting on a show at Kentucky. And another one that a bunch of people wanted you to get scored a season-high 20 points in a Xavier win over Butler a couple of nights ago.
So, to sum up, while everyone is confused now over what year it is, most know exactly what time it is.
As the Tom Hanks character in the film, "That Thing You Do," said to his one-hit wonder band before a big performance at a state fair, "It's very important you don't stink today."
That guy should be sticking his head in the locker room before every game to make certain the message is delivered before the team falls behind by double digits.
And maybe he could whisper a message to Payne. The effort is improving. The team is playing better. Things are looking better. Even so, it may be later than he thinks.
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