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It took just seven games for the wheels to completely fall off Louisville‘s first season under new coach Kenny Payne.
That was when Payne took to the postgame podium to openly — and, one could say, justifiably — question his team’s desire.
“We did not compete. We did not fight. We didn’t meet their intensity. At times, it looked like we gave up,” Payne said after the Cardinals’ home loss to Maryland on November 29, which dropped them to 0-7.
Seven games into Payne’s tenure, and Louisville was already at rock bottom. Or so we thought.
Then came a 27-point home loss to Miami — and Payne saying he wasn’t sure his team had truly hit its low point.
Kenny Payne: “I don’t feel like we’re on the upward swing yet….I don’t know yet if we’ve really hit rock bottom.”@LouisvilleMBB visits FSU Saturday afternoon. @840WHAS pic.twitter.com/pe4vdOBfPN
— Will Clark (@WClark840WHAS) December 9, 2022
Of course, Louisville then lost by 22 the next week to Florida State, which had just one win this season entering the game. The Cardinals have now lost six straight games by at least 19 points. Their average margin of defeat against power conference teams is a whopping 25.2 points. They’re 0-9, holders of the longest losing streak to start a season in ACC history and just two games away from tying the program’s worst start (1940-41). They already have more 25-point losses (four) than in any season in program history.
They became only the second major conference team in the past 40 years to start a season with seven straight losses.
Perhaps the most alarming stat, though: Louisville is ranked No. 360 out of 363 teams in the NCAA’s NET rankings. That’s embarrassing enough — if that weren’t one spot ahead of where they were slotted in the initial NET rankings on Dec. 5.
Is Louisville at rock bottom yet? Entering Wednesday’s home game against in-state rival Western Kentucky (9 p.m. ET, ESPN2), it sure feels like it.
Louisville is one of the most storied programs in college basketball history. The Cardinals won a national championship less than a decade ago. They finished one game away from an ACC title just three seasons ago. So how did Louisville fall apart so quickly, just nine games into Payne’s tenure?
Holes in roster construction
In the modern era of men’s college basketball, with the ever-growing transfer portal and pressure to win quickly, complete roster flips shortly after a new coach takes over are not uncommon. Just look at some of the new hires made last spring.
At Kansas State, Jerome Tang saw 10 players leave and landed seven from the portal. Chris Jans at Mississippi State watched six depart, but came back with five new ones. Missouri had eight players hit the portal following Dennis Gates’ hire, but Gates signed six Division I and two junior college transfers. And, of course, there was the ultimate rebuilding job at LSU, where Matt McMahon had his entire roster in the portal at one point, and ultimately reloaded with 10 newcomers.
Louisville was not nearly as active last spring.
Despite seven players leaving, Payne landed only one scholarship player from the portal, Tennessee forward Brandon Huntley-Hatfield. He kept hold of one recruit from the Chris Mack era, ESPN 100 prospect Kamari Lands, and signed former LSU commit Devin Ree. Two other Mack commits, Tae Davis and Fredrick King, reopened their recruitments and went elsewhere (Seton Hall and Creighton, respectively).
Mack didn’t leave a roster completely bereft of talent though. There are five former ESPN 100 prospects in the program, and El Ellis was one of the best junior college guards in the country when he arrived last season. That said, this was also a group that went 13-19 overall in 2021-22 and then lost seven of its top 10 players. It needed an overhaul.
“I don’t know how they didn’t look at the roster and just go and get someone from like, the CAA that averaged 16 a game,” one opposing coach said.
There was also one glaring issue with the roster: a complete lack of guards. There was Ellis … and that was about it. The Cardinals were linked to a slew of different top-tier options — Tyrese Hunter, Malachi Smith, Isiaih Mosley, to name a few. But Louisville struck out on all of them and didn’t really have a backup plan.
“Everybody is saying there’s not a lot of guards, but there really is,” Ellis told ESPN before the season began. “There’s multiple guards. Everybody keeps saying we don’t have a lot of guards, but we have everything that we need.”
Payne ended up settling on Fabio Basili, a three-star guard who committed in August, and Hercy Miller, son of rapper Master P, who played six games at Tennessee State before attempting to walk on at Xavier and then entering the portal when Travis Steele left the Musketeers.
“Right now they just don’t have many guards outside of Ellis,” one opposing coach said. “They have more frontcourt players than guards.”
Recruiting misses
Louisville’s struggles have not been limited to on-court issues. When Payne took over last March, Louisville immediately began generating buzz as a legitimate contender for No. 1 recruit D.J. Wagner and his high school and AAU teammate, top-five recruit Aaron Bradshaw. From his time at Oregon and Kentucky, Payne had established himself as one of the best assistant coach recruiters in the country, consistently contributing to highly-ranked recruiting classes.
“With my background and what I’ve done in recruiting, obviously you’re going to hear you’re getting all the top guys,” Payne told ESPN in October. “It’s flattering to think people assume when I recruit a kid, I automatically get them.”
Payne turned up the heat in May, when he hired Milt Wagner, the former Louisville star who played with Payne on the Cardinals’ 1986 national championship team — and is D.J.’s grandfather.
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Louisville hires Milt Wagner to be the director of player development and alumni relations.
At the time, there was a perception Louisville might be the leader for Wagner, ahead of heated rival, and Payne’s former employer, Kentucky.
“My dad went to Louisville. Kenny, that’s my uncle,” Dajuan Wagner, D.J.’s father, said in April, summing up the battle. “It shouldn’t take Kenny to get a job for my dad to be working for the university. He did a lot for that university. … I love Cal. That was my coach. It’s going to be D.J.’s decision. I’ll be happy regardless.”
“My dad loves Louisville,” he added. “And D.J. loves Louisville, too, because that’s where his grandpa went.
“Cal, that’s family. D.J.’s been coming to his camps since he was 5, 6 years old. I’d take him to the father-son camp and all that stuff. But Cal knows the relationship with Kenny. Kenny was there when we were going to the camps.”
The tide began to turn in July, and a majority of industry sources began considering Wagner a heavy Kentucky lean. The same went for Bradshaw, although that race appeared to be tighter. By the time fall rolled around, most of the drama had disappeared from the star duo’s recruitments.
Bradshaw committed to Kentucky on Oct. 14, and Wagner joined him in Lexington exactly one month later.
A.J. Johnson, a third top-25 Louisville target since the early part of the summer, never ended up visiting Louisville, postponing a scheduled official visit and committing to Texas before rescheduling the trip.
To be fair, it’s not all doom and gloom on the recruiting trail. Louisville does have two ESPN 100 prospects in the fold for 2023, with forwards Curtis Williams and Kaleb Glenn signing letters of intent with the Cardinals in November. Glenn committed in September 2021, while Williams pledged to Payne in September of this year.
New staffs aiming too high for targets isn’t exclusive to Payne and the Cardinals; it’s a common occurrence for new coaches with past recruiting success. But instead of going after three top-10 transfers and five-star high school prospects, filling out the roster with proven mid-major college players or going after top-150 recruits might be the way moving forward until they can stack some wins on the court and show some consistency.
It’s also worth noting that the NCAA cloud hanging over Louisville’s head for more than five years was finally cleared in November, with the Cardinals receiving modest penalties related to the FBI investigation that ensnared the program.
Brighter days should be ahead in this department.
Disappointing performances
Roster construction and recruiting struggles aside, the Cardinals are flat-out not good on the court. They lost at home to Bellarmine, Wright State and Appalachian State to start the 2022-23 season, and have been completely noncompetitive in games against stiffer competition.
“We didn’t really have to do anything special,” one opposing coach said. “They played normal ball-screen coverage, they don’t really zone, they don’t really trap the post. You know what you’re getting.”
Defensively, they aren’t terrible, from a statistics point of view. But offense has been a nightmare.
Louisville ranks sub-300 nationally in 2-point percentage, 3-point percentage, assist rate, offensive rebounding percentage, and is in the bottom 10 nationally in turnover percentage. In other words, the Cards have trouble getting shots up due to their turnover issues.
When they do take shots, those aren’t going in. They getting second-chance opportunities, either.
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El Ellis buries 3 against Maryland Terrapins
Much of this stems from a lack of playmakers. Ellis is the team’s leading scorer, but he has minimal help in the creation department; he’s the only player averaging more than one assist per game. Jae’lyn Withers hasn’t been able to match his freshman season production, while Sydney Curry‘s numbers have declined dramatically since last season. The newcomers have struggled to hit the ground running, too.
“You can’t really pinpoint just one problem,” one opposing coach said. “You can’t say, well, they just don’t offensive rebound. I mean, they don’t do that either, but they also need more skill, they also don’t have shooters. They’ve been noncompetitive.”
What’s next?
The calls to put Payne on the hot seat after nine games are incredibly misguided. Barring landing both Wagner and Bradshaw, there wasn’t going to be a one-year fix for Louisville’s issues. Remember, this is a team that was on a downward trajectory before Payne took over. It’s a team that lost 16 of its final 19 games last season and returned only a couple of rotation players. And part of Payne’s remit when he took over was to bridge the generations of Louisville basketball amid criticisms of the program from a couple of select former players.
Nobody expected Louisville to be this bad after one month, however.
And the momentum within the fan base when he was hired has dissipated as the losses have mounted.
“The arena was probably one-third full when we played them,” one opposing coach said. “The crowd was supportive, but there wasn’t a ton of atmosphere.”
“It’s an incredible arena — but there’s no student presence,” another coach added. “I’m sure they were there, but I never felt them.”
But, patience is required.
This season isn’t salvageable (outside of trying to avoid going winless), but making sure players buy in is still necessary.
“There has to be some pride,” Payne said after the Appalachian State loss. “That is what this program is built on … This place is special. This program is special. I need them to understand how special.”
Figuring out which players he should keep and which areas of the roster need wholesale changes is paramount. Aiming for more reasonable targets in the portal and on the recruiting trail to have incremental progress next season should be the goal.
“He’s always been in ‘best players jobs,'” one coach said of Payne. “A lot of new coaches are in that situation. At Kentucky, he got the best players. And now he’s not getting the best players. He has to figure out how to win when he doesn’t have the best players every night. That’s a challenge. It takes time.”
And here’s the plus side: Even if the Cardinals lose to Western Kentucky on Wednesday, they play Florida A&M at home Saturday. The Rattlers don’t have a Division I win this season. Louisville can’t lose that one … right?