At the end of an odd rivalry night, the UK coach goes to bat for the U of L coach

The 2023-24 renewal of the Kentucky-Louisville men’s basketball rivalry was every bit as odd as predicted.

At various points in the second half, the home team’s coach had to use timeouts to take the crowd out of the game.

With U of L entering the game mired in a 9-34 stretch to start the Kenny Payne coaching era at his alma mater, the crowd of 17,293 that entered the KFC Yum included thousands of fans in UK blue — and some U of L backers wearing paper bags over their heads.

The “Dream Game” atmosphere, this was not.

After No. 9 Kentucky did the one thing everyone expected — opening up a 20-point halftime lead on overmatched Louisville and then coasting to a 95-76 victory — Thursday night ended with another unprecedented occurrence in the modern history of the Wildcats-Cardinals grudge fest.

The UK coach used his postgame news conference to go to bat for the U of L coach.

“My guess is, (Payne) will have this program within a year where everybody wants it,” Calipari said. “It’s just the growing pains are miserable.”

After Louisville (5-7) got off to a gritty start against UK, Kentucky veterans Antonio Reeves (30 points, including 22 in a scintillating first half) and Tre Mitchell (18 points and 12 rebounds) helped steady the Wildcats (9-2). UK also got valuable contributions from freshmen Justin Edwards (13 points and seven rebounds) and Reed Sheppard (11 points and 11 assists).

Louisville slowed the game’s pace early, and the strategy helped U of L take a 17-16 lead on a Tre White jumper with 11:11 left in the first half. Subsequently, UK unleashed a withering 17-3 run to take a 33-20 lead and, more or less, had control for the remainder of the game.

Payne, of course, was an assistant to Calipari at UK from 2010 through 2020. So if Payne’s coaching tenure goes down in flames, it is another debit on a “Calipari coaching tree” that has not exactly yielded stellar results.

With the loss to UK, Payne now stands 9-35 as Louisville’s head coach. When the opponent is not Kentucky, the stands in the KFC Yum Center at games this season have looked only slightly more populated than ghost towns.

Given the record and the optics that surround Payne’s program, it’s not outrageous that there has been speculation about how firm his hold on his job is.

Without being prompted, Calipari took that head on. Calipari noted in his postgame presser that Louisville had outscored Kentucky 43-42 in the second half.

That “tells you that his team, Kenny’s team, never stopped. They just kept playing,” Calipari said.

After a truly dispiriting effort in a 75-63 home loss to Arkansas State last week, U of L played well in an ensuing 85-63 rout of Pepperdine and showed considerable fight against a more talented Kentucky roster.

Louisville started a junior, three sophomores and a freshman against the Cats. “He’s got a really young team,” Calipari said of Payne. “You’ve got to let him do what he does. The players love him, because they played for him. They never let go of the rope.”

Payne, for his part, said he believes U of L has improved since it lost 86-63 to UK at Rupp Arena last season.

“To me, the gap is closing, I see segments where the gap is closing,” Payne said. “I don’t know if the fans see it, or if you guys see it as the media, but the gap is closing. So I feel like we are headed in the right direction, (though) we’ve still got a lot of work to do.”

Even if you take the performance against Pepperdine and the fight shown by Louisville against UK as progress, one wonders if it isn’t already too late for Payne.

It is easy to be cynical about coaches defending other head men who they are beating. With Calipari having now run his record against Louisville to 13-3 as Kentucky’s coach, he likely feels confident he can handle whoever might be coaching the Cards.

So it was likely genuine sentiment for Payne that had Calipari lobbying after Thursday night’s game for his former assistant.

“I feel for him,” Calipari said. “We went through this a couple of years ago (the 9-16 season in 2020-21). People get mean and nasty, they do. That’s what you have to deal with in this profession.

“Anytime I text him, ‘Coach your team.’ That’s what I send him, ‘just coach your team.’ All the other stuff, it doesn’t matter.”

At the end of an unusual rivalry experience that saw “Go Big Blue!” chants ringing throughout a Louisville home game, we were treated to something else that never would have happened in the past.

“Kenny, he’s like my brother,” Calipari said.

In our state’s preeminent men’s basketball rivalry, we’re a long, long way from the “Calipari-Pitino coaching antagonists” era.

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