‘The gap is closing.’ Kenny Payne talks after Louisville basketball’s loss to Kentucky.

Kenny Payne’s team did not win this game.

That’s been a true sentiment for most of the games Payne has coached in his less than two full seasons leading the Louisville program that he once starred for as a player, but it’s especially true of the two games he’s coached against Kentucky, his former employers.

Last season, the Cardinals suffered a 23-point defeat in Lexington as part of a disastrous 4-28 campaign.

While the results have been marginally better this season, the Cardinals’ performance against the Wildcats was not.

Thursday night’s 95-76 UK win at the KFC Yum Center was punctuated by a standout showing by Kentucky fifth-year guard Antonio Reeves (30 points) and keyed by a 15-1 run the Wildcats enjoyed midway through the first half.

Louisville allowed 1.28 points per possession in the home loss, which dropped the Cards to 5-7 overall this season and 9-35 in the Payne era.

The 95 points scored by Kentucky represented the most points for UK in the rivalry series since 1991.

Kentucky leads the all-time series against Louisville 39-17.

Afterward, Payne discussed another heavy defeat to Kentucky, as well as the near-constant speculation surrounding his status as Louisville’s head coach.

Here’s everything Payne said after another rough night for the Louisville program.

Opening statement: First of all, we played a team that’s... They’ve got them ranked 9, but they’re a lot better than 9. And the reason they’re a lot better than 9 is they share the ball, they defend, they have players that can really shoot the ball, really pass the ball, probably the best passing team that we’ve played.

And they’re a machine. They keep coming at you, and at you, and at you and I thought for the first 10 minutes we did a really good job and we affected them some. But as it wore out, we didn’t quite keep it going and we stopped defending the way and we didn’t share the ball like we should have. And that led to them making runs.

(UK) was great in transition, great rebounding and a really good team.

Question about how Payne has handled coaching amid speculation about his job security.

For me it’s more about how do I get this team better? I feel like we are getting better.

Keeping them close together. That’s been the focus. Just living on that.

Question about if Payne could have done anything better to get Louisville to be a more competitive team this season.

I would say obviously there are things I could’ve done better. There are some games that we lost that we could have won, should have won. On paper it says that we were the better team.

I’m not sitting here and saying that I’m not at fault. I’m not happy with where we are, but I also know that we still can get better and there’s a lot of room for growth. But it’s not all on the kids.

I have to do a better job of getting these guys prepared to play really good teams.

Question about if Payne takes satisfaction from Louisville outscoring Kentucky in the second half.

I talked to the guys about the first 10 minutes of the game, what it felt like. How you had (UK) on their heels a little bit. And then I talked about the next 10 minutes of the game. And how we stopped sharing the ball, we didn’t have assists, we didn’t get back in transition, we weren’t locked in defensively and a guy goes off for 22 points (in the first half).

Second half, I think we won the second half by one, I mean, so in a 10-, 11-minute spurt, 20-point game.

Question about what the game plan was to contain Kentucky’s offense.

The game plan was knowing that this is an excellent transition team and that we had to sprint back and match up. And at times that’s hard, because it’s not just one guy or two guys, it’s five guys that all have the ability to drive it, pass it and shoot it.

The other part of the game plan was making sure that we ran good offense and that we took good shots and play sort of like we played against Pepperdine. They’re going to collapse on drives, we can’t go in and try to shoot layups on 6-11, 7-1 shot blockers, athletes.

So we get them to suck in and we spray the ball out, or we come to jump stop, shot fake and we go to the free-throw line.

I thought we did that a little bit at the start of the first half, and as the half went on we tried to make the play, make the shot, they blocked the shot.

Question about why Louisville lost momentum after a strong start, and why Louisville couldn’t capture that momentum again.

Well I just thought we, me, have to do a better job of explaining to them: Listen, it’s slipping away. You’ve got to get back to how we’ve got the lead, how we got even with them. How do we do that? And have them talk through it.

‘Coach, we got even with them by moving the ball, driving, taking the ball downhill.’ Don’t play with the ball, go North (and) South, get downhill, make them collapse, spray the ball. And get good shots.

Brandon (Huntley-Hatfield) did a good job initially of putting pressure on them, but as the game (went on) we sort of went away from Brandon. We still have to find Brandon.

Question about freshman guard Ty-Laur Johnson struggling.

When you’re an emotional young man and you’re young, right, so he’s a freshman. Really good basketball player, and he’s playing against really good basketball players, right.

So, in the heat of the battle, you can’t give your spirit to anything other than the task at hand. If you give your spirit to a bad call, and that knocks you out of whack, you’re affecting our team. You’re affecting your play. If you give your spirit to someone talking trash to you and you want to talk trash back and you play out of character, then you’re giving your spirit to something negative that’s going to affect us.

You’re a good basketball player, trust and be secure in who you are. We need you, sorely, badly, we need him to play the right way. Most of the assists we get, he’s probably going to be the main guy getting those assists.

You can’t let it get to where: ‘I’ve got to score, I’ve got to score, I’ve got to score.’ Or, you’ve got to see the game and not give it to the referees who you may feel like they didn’t give you a call. That doesn’t matter. Keep playing. Keep playing. That’s the lesson.

Question about Payne’s lineup decisions in the first half and opting to not call a timeout in the second half.

So if you look at (UK)‘s team. How many guys played 12 minutes or more?

So they’ve got a bunch of guys, right.

So, when you play this game and you play a top-five team and they’ve got a bunch of players, our guys are going to get tired and they need a blow. So we’re hoping that we can give the guys blows and then come back to them and they’re fresh.

So that’s the first thing. In the second half, look the game is teetering. We need to keep this game competitive. You guys have got to keep fighting through. You’ve got to keep fighting through. We want to win four-minute segments. And that’s what we talked about doing.

Question about where Payne sees Louisville getting better.

So, the first thing is when we’re playing well, you see we’re getting assists. Again, 14 assists tonight, that should have been 20.

When we play that way, we played that way for the first 10 minutes, when we play that way we’re pretty good. When we don’t play that way, we look like individuals, not a team.

Question about how close Payne thinks Louisville is to being as good as a team like Kentucky.

If I’m using Kentucky as a measuring stick. I mean, did you see all those All-Americans out there?

The first thing I’ll say is, I don’t know what the game was last year, to me I see segments where the gap is closing. The gap is closing. And I don’t know if fans see it, you guys see it as media people, but the gap is closing.

And I feel like we’re headed in the right direction. Now, we’ve still got a lot of work to do. I’ve got a lot of work to do. I’ve got to be better. I’m not saying I have all the answers, but when I look at my team, how many really good high school players can walk in here and demand starting time?

Not many. I will probably now have to go to the transfer portal and get a guy that’s been in college three or four years to add to this. That’s where we are. I think that’s a big jump from where we started.

Where high school kids can’t walk in here and outplay a Ty-Laur who has a year (of experience), or a Skyy (Clark) who has two years now. Or Tre (White).

You see what I’m saying? We have good players that are very young and they’re only going to get better. So the next step is bringing in transfer guys that can take this over the hump.

Question about what Payne thinks about the nearly two-week break until Louisville plays again.

I love the fact that we’ve got time because we’ve got to get better. We’ve got to get more consistent. I have to look at these first 10 or 12 games and asses what we could do better and we’ve got time to work on things that we want to do to get this team better.

We’re getting into conference play now and in conference play the teams are good, but I think that we have shown that we’re capable of being competitive and if you fall asleep on us, we may burn some people.

Question about Payne’s roster construction for this season and not getting more veteran guys from the transfer portal.

Well, I think when you talk about what we did... We won four games last year. So when you go to talk to kids that are high-level kids, they want to know: ‘Coach, are you going to win more than four games? How can I come to Louisville and lose, and win four games?’

So, there’s apprehension there, right. Then on top of that, all the top schools are going after the top transfer guys. So, I have to battle that. And I have to make sure that, probably, that nobody finds out exactly who the transfer guys are that we’re going after, or the top schools are going to get them.

It’s just the nature of the beast. I think we’re heading in the direction where, we’re about to make the next jump. And I’m happy with that, but also knowing we’ve got a lot of work to do to get these guys better.

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