With Kenny Payne’s future in doubt, what does Louisville basketball recruiting look like?

It’s been a time of speculation and swirling rumors for the Louisville men’s basketball program.

Second-year head coach Kenny Payne continues to deliver underwhelming results for the Cardinals — Sunday’s 22-point home romp over Pepperdine aside — and the popular belief is that it’s a matter of when, not if, Payne is removed from his post.

In less than two full seasons as U of L’s head coach, Payne has compiled a 9-34 overall record and a 2-19 mark in ACC games. This includes a 4-28 overall record last season, which set a record for the most defeats in one season in program history.

Payne’s tenure as head coach has featured embarrassing losses at home inside the KFC Yum! Center to the likes of NCAA Division II schools Lenoir-Rhyne and Kentucky Wesleyan (exhibitions), and to Bellarmine, Wright State, Lipscomb, Chattanooga and Arkansas State in regular season contests.

Questions have and will continue to be asked about Payne’s future as head coach. Following Sunday’s win over Pepperdine, Payne said he’s recently had conversations with Louisville athletics director Josh Heird about how to take 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.

All of this also begs the question of what Louisville basketball recruiting has looked like under Payne. And what effect his dismissal would have on current Louisville recruiting efforts.

How well has Louisville recruited under Kenny Payne?

Payne’s first U of L roster for that disastrous 4-28 season featured several newcomers on the team, both as traditional freshmen and as transfer additions.

Freshmen Devin Ree, Fabio Basili, Kamari Lands and Emmanuel Okorafor were joined by 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 Aidan McCool (Maryland) on Louisville’s 2022-23 team.

The four-player freshman class ranked as the 26th-best group of newcomers in the nation at the time of enrollment, per 247Sports.

With Huntley-Hatfield as the only transfer addition of note, Louisville had the 67th-best transfer portal class in the country two offseasons ago, again per 247Sports.

Obviously, this plan didn’t work for the Cardinals, who finished the 2022-23 season ranked No. 290 in KenPom and only managed wins over NCAA Division II school Chaminade (exhibition), Western Kentucky, Florida A&M, Georgia Tech and Clemson during the season.

So, things changed entering the 2023-24 season.

Payne brought in a five-player freshman recruiting class (Dennis Evans, Trentyn Flowers, Kaleb Glenn, Ty-Laur Johnson and Curtis Williams) that was viewed as a top-10 class nationally, in what was considered a down year for recruiting.

This influx of talent was supplemented by a quartet of transfer additions: Former UK signee Skyy Clark (Illinois), Koron Davis (Los Angeles Southwest College), Danilo Jovanovich (Miami) and Tre White (Southern California).

It’s worth noting that among the players lost by Louisville to the transfer portal last offseason were El Ellis (Arkansas) and Jae’Lyn Withers (North Carolina). Both Ellis and Withers have played in every game for their respective new teams this season.

According to college basketball statistician Evan Miyakawa, Louisville’s 2023 transfer class ranked as the 44th-best class in the country.

As has been well-documented by now, issues with both the freshman additions and transfer portal pickups have shaped the narrative for this Louisville season, which has shown some on-court improvement with a 5-6 record that also includes a last-second loss to a ranked Texas team.

In August, Flowers (who reclassified from the 2024 recruiting group) abruptly left Louisville to turn professional and signed with the National Basketball League in Australia. He never played for the Cardinals.

Evans — a former Minnesota signee and a borderline five-star prospect — has played only sparingly for the Cards this season and has missed the last four games with a shoulder injury.

A bizarre saga with Davis ended this month with the Louisville program issuing two different statements about Davis: The first said Davis intended to leave U of L and transfer, while the second said Davis had been dismissed from the team.

While the basketball has, for the most part, remained sub-standard for U of L in the 2023-24 season, the drama has certainly exceeded expectations, and that’s with better talent on the court.

What does Louisville recruiting look like right now?

For a while, it appeared as if the Cardinals had essentially zero momentum on the recruiting trail.

Of the 16 players in the class of 2024 who hold a Louisville scholarship offer, 11 have already signed to play at other schools. Louisville’s lone commit in the 2024 recruiting class is three-star point guard TJ Robinson, who committed to U of L in October 2022.

Robinson didn’t sign with the Cardinals during the early signing period this November.

But, Payne and the U of L program received a jolt last 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 — took an official visit to Louisville over the weekend.

Knox was in attendance for Louisville’s Sunday win over Pepperdine.

Knox, who is teammates with 2024 Kentucky signee Somto Cyril at the Atlanta-based Overtime Elite program, is considering Kentucky, Louisville, South Florida and the NBA’s G-League Ignite for his next basketball stop.

On Friday night, Knox declined to comment when the Herald-Leader asked him if he would still consider going to Louisville if Payne wasn’t the head coach. Kentucky head coach John Calipari and assistant coach Orlando Antigua both watched Knox play Friday night at Overtime Elite ahead of UK’s win over North Carolina on Saturday in Atlanta.

In addition to Knox, two other players with U of L scholarship offers in the class of 2024 are still considering the Cardinals: Small forward Bryson Tucker and power forward Sekou Konneh.

Further down the line, in the class of 2025, two players with a UK scholarship offer — guards Meleek Thomas and Jasper Johnson — also hold Louisville offers. In the class of 2026, both the Cats and Cards have an offer out to Louisville native Tyran Stokes, who plays at a prep school in California.

Another interesting layer to Louisville’s recruiting activities are the people in position to try and bring players to the Derby City.

All three of the assistant coaches that are allowed to recruit off-campus for Louisville — Danny Manning, Nolan Smith and Josh Jamieson — are under contract with the school through April 2025.

Recently, class of 2026 in-state recruit Tay Kinney (Newport) specifically mentioned his relationship with Jamieson when providing an update on his recruitment.

After an NCAA rule change this year allowed for schools to now have up to five assistant coaches, Payne opted 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).

Payne’s contract with Louisville runs through March 2028.

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