Louisville basketball has bottomed out. Kenny Payne will get more time to lift it up.

For all the oddities that surrounded the latest edition of the Kentucky-Louisville men’s basketball rivalry series — from the amount of each team’s fans in the KFC Yum Center to the potential coaching ramifications brought by the final score — something was crystal clear on the court Thursday night.

The gap between John Calipari’s Wildcats and Kenny Payne’s Cardinals is an ocean wide, and perhaps larger than that.

A 19-point win for the Wildcats this year followed last year’s 23-point rout in Lexington.

A spirited, competitive opening 10 minutes of Thursday’s game soon gave way to a 15-1 Kentucky run midway through the first half. An avalanche of Kentucky points flowed without a U of L response, and UK’s 20-point halftime lead set the visitors on course for an easy rivalry win in front of a national TV audience on ESPN.

Kentucky set a KFC Yum Center scoring record for an opponent (95 points) in the win.

“Go Big Blue” and “Blue-White” chants emanated from a Kentucky fan base that was well represented in the Derby City, although the crowd split was closer to 50-50 than most anticipated. That takeaway itself might have been the most damning indictment of Louisville basketball on this pre-Christmas night.

“I don’t know what the (UK) game was last year, to me I see segments where the gap is closing,” Payne said postgame. “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.”

On Friday, Payne received support from Louisville athletics director Josh Heird, who told WDRB that the Cardinals’ second year head man would remain the coach of the team into the new year.

The Cardinals are 5-7 overall this season, and they’re already off to an 0-1 start in ACC play. It’s only league games from here on out for Payne’s team, which now has the following defeats on its ledger this season:

▪ An exhibition loss to NCAA Division II school Kentucky Wesleyan, the second straight season in which Louisville has lost an exhibition game at home to a D-II program.

▪ A 10-point home loss to Chattanooga of the Southern Conference (not the SEC, the SoCon).

▪ A seven-point loss at a DePaul team that entered that game with a 1-7 record.

▪ A 12-point home loss to Arkansas State (currently 4-8) that spurred rampant rumors that Payne was to be dismissed as head coach.

▪ A 19-point loss at home to Kentucky that came in front of so many UK fans that Louisville prepped for the game by piping crowd noise into its practices. For a home game.

That’s just the raw on-court product from this season, without factoring in anything from last season’s 4-28 disaster.

Furthermore, this is without taking into account any of the off-court shenanigans from recent months, which have included the following:

▪ Heralded recruit Trentyn Flowers leaving the U of L program in August to turn professional in Australia.

▪ Freshman guard Ty-Laur Johnson (a bright spot on this year’s Louisville squad) reportedly not playing in part of a game because Louisville didn’t have the tights for him to wear.

▪ The entire saga surrounding transfer guard Koron Davis, and the messy nature in which Davis and the U of L program have gone their separate ways.

▪ Any of the now-infamous quotes Payne has uttered throughout the season, some of which have become magnified because of everything else that has occurred during his head coaching tenure.

It’s been one thing after another for Louisville athletic director Josh Heird to manage, and the cavalry isn’t coming to help.

Louisville only has one commit in the 2024 recruiting class, and that player (three-star point guard TJ Robinson) hasn’t yet signed to play at U of L.

UK fans stay until the end for another big win over Louisville

With 5:29 to go in Thursday’s game, the exodus began in earnest.

Kentucky fifth-year forward Tre Mitchell made two 3-pointers in the span of just 24 seconds, and Payne called timeout with UK leading by 25 points.

Mitchell paraded across U of L’s signature Dunking Bird logo at midcourt, and mimed calling a timeout.

Payne’s choice to call a 30-second timeout wasn’t meant to turn the game around. Or to institute a play call that would deliver the Cardinals a crunch time score.

It was to stop the bleeding. To provide a brief respite from the inevitable, and to delay the confirmation of the same.

But the stoppage was plenty of time for most fans, specifically those in red, to leave their seats and not return. Throngs of Louisville fans picked this moment to leave the game, with more than five minutes still to play against their fiercest rival.

A media timeout less than two minutes later provided another chance for anyone left behind to also leave.

A strong contingent of Kentucky fans were then left to revel in the celebratory moments that followed: Antonio Reeves checking out after a 30-point performance. Rob Dillingham’s breakaway windmill dunk. Reed Sheppard setting a rivalry game record with 11 assists.

This also meant it was mainly Kentucky fans left to watch postgame handshakes take place.

When Calipari walked toward Payne, he didn’t do so with a smile, but with an apologetic shrug, before sharing an embrace with his longtime coaching comrade.

Postgame, Calipari yet again went to bat for Payne.

“He’s got a really young team, and you got to let them go do what he does,” Calipari said. “The players love him because they play for him. They never let go of the rope.”

Cal even shared what he texts Payne during difficult stretches for U of L.

“Anytime I text him, ‘Coach your team.’ That’s what I send him,” Calipari said. “My guess is he’ll have this program, within a year, where everybody wants it.”

What does Louisville do with Kenny Payne?

The multi-million dollar question surrounding U of L men’s basketball was whether Heird and the administration will provide Payne with one more month, let alone one more year, to improve things.

Heird provided some clarity on that matter Friday morning.

“Kenny, and I have had a number of conversations throughout the last week, and Kenny is going to serve as our head coach as we move into the new year,” Heird told Eric Crawford of WDRB in Louisville. “And I’m going to do what I do with every one of our programs, which is evaluate what’s happening throughout the season.”

The Cardinals don’t play again until a Jan. 3 road contest at Virginia, a nearly two-week break.

The two U of L players made available to media members Thursday — former UK signee guard Skyy Clark and transfer forward Brandon Huntley-Hatfield — came out in support of Payne.

“We’re the players, we’re still rocking with KP,” Clark said.

“Forever,” Huntley-Hatfield interjected.

Huntley-Hatfield went on to explain the close bond he shares with Payne, comparing him to a second father and providing a necessary human perspective on the situation beyond the box scores.

But those box scores are piling up against Payne, and the spotlight has quickly shifted to the fiscal side of things.

The financial situation with Payne has been well chronicled already: He’s paid $3.35 million per season to coach U of L, and his contract with the school runs through March 2028. Currently, Louisville would have to pay Payne $8 million to fire him without cause. That amount drops to $6 million after this season, and to $4 million the season after that.

Plenty of prognostication has already occurred, and will continue to, about Payne’s immediate and long-term future at Louisville.

During Thursday night’s postgame press conference, Payne answered some questions with the 2024-25 season seemingly already in mind.

He spoke about the need to target more players from the NCAA transfer portal, and how he believes his team is talented to the point where “really good high school players” would struggle to come to Louisville and start right away.

“That’s where we are. I think that’s a big jump from where we started,” Payne said.

Patience would likely be more prominent in the Payne discourse if the on-court product wasn’t so bad.

When asked about the gap between Kentucky and Louisville, Payne chuckled and referenced the McDonald’s All-Americans that litter Kentucky’s roster.

That same caliber of recruit certainly isn’t suiting up for Louisville.

“We won four games last year,” Payne said. “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?”

Therein lies Payne’s biggest problem.

Whether its potential recruits or transfer portal pickups, the hole dug in year one has affected how much progress can be made in year two. And so on.

A self-fulfilling prophecy that likely won’t have an ending on his terms.

“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,” Payne said to close his postgame presser. “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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