For the Louisville men’s basketball team, it’s been a season of uncertainty and swirling rumors. Kenny Payne, the Cardinals’ second-year head coach, continues to produce mediocre results—with the exception of Sunday’s 22-point home rout against Pepperdine—and the common perception is that it’s a question of when, not if, Payne gets fired. Payne has a 9-34 overall record and a 2-19 ACC record in fewer than two seasons as the University of Louisiana’s head coach. This includes a 4-28 overall record last season, which set a program record for the most defeats in a single season. Payne’s career as head coach has included humiliating home defeats to NCAA Division II institutions Lenoir-Rhyne and Kentucky Wesleyan (exhibitions), as well as regular season losses to Bellarmine, Wright State, Lipscomb, Chattanooga, and Arkansas State.
Payne’s future as head coach has been and will continue to be questioned. Following Sunday’s victory over Pepperdine, Payne stated that he has recently spoken with Louisville athletics director Josh Heird about taking the U of L program “to the next level.” “For me, I think it’s important that people understand that I am emotionally committed to this program,” Payne said in a statement.
All of this begs the question of how Louisville basketball recruiting has fared under Payne. And what impact his departure would have on Louisville’s present recruiting efforts? Mr. Matt Stone THE NETWORK OF USA TODAY HOW WELL DID LOUISVILLE RECRUITER KENNY PAYNE DO? Payne’s first lineup at the University of Louisville for that catastrophic 4-28 season included several rookies, both as typical freshmen and as transfer additions. Transfer portal additions Brandon Huntley-Hatfield (Tennessee), Hercy Miller (Tennessee State and Xavier), Zan Payne (Kenny Payne’s son and a former Kentucky player), and Aiden McCool (Maryland) joined freshmen Devin Ree, Fabio Basili, Kamari Lands, and Emmanuel Okorafor on Louisville’s 2022–23 team. According to 247Sports, the four-player freshmen class was the 26th-best bunch of newcomers in the country at the time of enrolling. Louisville had the 67th-best transfer portal class in the NCAA two offseasons ago, according to 247Sports, with Huntley-Hatfield as the sole notable transfer addition. This strategy clearly did not work for the Cardinals, who concluded the 2022–23 season at No. 290 in KenPom and only achieved wins over NCAA Division II Chaminade (exhibition), Western Kentucky, Florida A&M, Georgia Tech, and Clemson. So, things have changed heading into the 2023–24 season. In what was considered a poor year for recruiting, Payne brought in a five-player freshman recruiting class (Dennis Evans, Trentyn Flowers, Kaleb Glenn, Ty-Laur Johnson, and Curtis Williams) that was regarded as a top-10 class nationally. Former UK signees Skyy Clark (Illinois), Koron Davis (Los Angeles Southwest College), Danilo Jovanovich (Miami), and Tre White (Southern California) were among the transfer additions.
It’s worth mentioning that Louisville lost El Ellis (Arkansas) and Jae’Lyn Withers (North Carolina) to the transfer portal last offseason. This season, Ellis and Withers have both appeared in every game for their respective new teams. Louisville’s 2023 transfer class was ranked 44th in the country by college basketball statistician Evan Miyakawa. As has been widely reported, problems with both freshman and transfer portal pickups have molded the narrative for this Louisville season, which has shown some on-court progress with a 5-6 record that includes a last-second loss to a ranked Texas squad. Flowers (who reclassified from the 2024 recruiting class) abruptly left Louisville in August to join the National Basketball League in Australia. He was never a member of the Cardinals. Evans, a former Minnesota signee and borderline five-star recruit, has appeared in only four games for the Cards this season due to a shoulder ailment. The odd Davis affair concluded last month, with the Louisville program issuing two statements about Davis: The first stated that Davis planned to quit U of L and transfer, while the second stated that Davis had been fired from the squad. While the basketball has remained subpar for U of L in the 2023–24 season, the drama has far exceeded expectations, even with stronger players on the floor. Last season, Kenny Payne and Louisville were defeated by Kentucky by a score of 23 points in Lexington. Mahan, Mark WHAT DOES RECRUITING IN LOUISVILLE LOOK LIKE RIGHT NOW? For a long time, it appeared that the Cardinals had virtually no recruiting momentum. Eleven of the 16 athletes in the class of 2024 that have a Louisville scholarship offer have already signed to play elsewhere. Three-star point guard TJ Robinson committed to Louisville in October 2022, making him the Cardinals’ lone commit in the 2024 recruiting class. Robinson did not sign with the Cardinals during the early signing period in November.
However, Payne and the University of Louisville program got a boost this week when five-star class of 2024 small forward Karter Knox, whose older brother Kevin was a one-and-done star at Kentucky with Payne on the UK coaching staff, paid an official visit to Louisville over the weekend. Knox was in attendance for Louisville’s win over Pepperdine on Sunday. Knox, who plays for the Atlanta-based Overtime Elite program alongside 2024 Kentucky signee Somto Cyril, is contemplating Kentucky, Louisville, South Florida, and the NBA’s G-League Ignite as his next basketball stop. When asked if he would still consider going to Louisville if Payne wasn’t the head coach on Friday night, Knox declined to say. Kentucky head coach John Calipari and assistant coach Orlando Antigua both watched Knox play at Overtime Elite on Friday night, ahead of the UK’s game against North Carolina on Saturday in Atlanta. Along with Knox, two more players with scholarship offers from the University of Louisville in the class of 2024 are still considering the Cardinals: small forward Bryson Tucker and power forward Sekou Konneh. In the class of 2025, two players with Kentucky scholarship offers—guards Meleek Thomas and Jasper Johnson—also have Louisville offers. Tyran Stokes, a Louisville native who plays at a prep school in California, has received offers from both the Cats and the Cards in the class of 2026. Another intriguing aspect of Louisville’s recruiting efforts is the people in positions to lure players to Derby City.
Louisville’s three off-campus recruiting assistant coaches—Danny Manning, Nolan Smith, and Josh Jamieson—are all under contract with the institution until April 2025. When delivering an update on his recruitment, class of 2026 in-state recruit Tay Kinney (Newport) especially noted his friendship with Jamieson. Payne chose to give those two newly available assistant coach positions (which aren’t allowed to recruit off campus) to people who were already part of the Cardinals’ program: Gabe Snider (director of analytics and video technology) and Milt Wagner (director of player development and alumni relations) after an NCAA rule change this year allowed for schools to now have up to five assistant coaches. Payne’s contract with Louisville expires in March 2028. Louisville head coach Kenny Payne has only one commitment for the class of 2024.
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