Kenny Payne's Message to Fans Amid Winless Start: 'I Want True Louisville Fans'
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - In case you have been living under a rock for the last month, the Louisville men's basketball program hasn't exactly had the best start to their 2022-23 season. And by that, I mean they're making an early case as one of the worst high-major squads in D1 college hoops history.
Eight games into the year, the Cardinals have yet to win a game under first-year head coach Kenny Payne. Not only is this the program's worst start to a season since the 1940-41 team dropped their first eleven games, but Louisville hasn't even been competitive, losing their last five games by an average of 25.8 points, with the last two coming at home.
For a wide majority of observers, ranging from those who anticipated Louisville to be a roughly .500-level squad to those who thought they could be an NCAA Tournament team, this type of start to the season has elicited the same reaction to the Cardinals' listless start: pure shock. Despite the fact that, for most of the offseason, Payne tried warning fans that it could be a bumpy first season.
"I said this from day one in my (introductory) press conference that I'm watching this see who's gonna jump off the Titanic," he said Friday. "I wasn't joking. I knew it was gonna be hard to rebuild this thing. In no way am I discouraged about anything that I've been through, anything that we've done."
Even those who did buy into Payne's offseason message have been stunned by the winless start. Sure, the hand that Payne was given - a losing team and a lingering IARP cloud over his head - was far from ideal, but almost no one imagined that things would get this bad for Louisville.
As you can imagine, many of those amongst the Cardinals fanbase have already decided to jump ship not only for the season, but for the Kenny Payne era as a whole. Speaking to the media ahead of Louisville's road matchup at Florida State, Payne was asked if he had a message for those who are starting to 'jump off the Titanic':
"I want true Louisville fans," he said. "I want a fan that understands that the reality of the situation. I know it's impossible. ... I want the fan, the true Louisville fan, the ones that truly know, that's a part of the process of building something special. It's going through the hard days, or going through the hard times, and never wavering in how your support is for the university.
"For the basketball program. Nobody's perfect. I'm not the perfect coach. I'm not coaching the perfect kids. No coach is. But, if we do it together, we can do it together. If we really want to do it together, we can. That's my message. Stick with us. Be a part of it, not just when it's good, but also when it's bad."
In defense of the fans, it's hard to have any true buy-in to the on-court product Louisville has put together for the first month of the season. It's not just the fact that they are getting blown out, but how they are doing it. Energy and effort has been extremely inconsistent, even non-existent at times. At the first sign of adversity, more often than not, they have folded. The offense has zero flow to it, as evidenced by their D1-worst assist/turnover margin of 0.42.
Payne admits that Louisville is far from trending in the right direction, but also believes that the bottom hasn't fallen out just yet. He believes that the difficult schedule up to this point has also magnifies the issues on an imperfect team.
"I don't feel like we're on the upward swing yet. I don't know yet if we've really hit rock bottom," he said. "I know that we're low, but again, it's hard to tell when you play five top-25 teams. ... When you're in a practice and you create adversity, it comes out. I need it to come out. I need it to get all the way out, because there's only one way for this to get fixed for the season, is to heal. Get all of it out, let's find out who was who. Let's find out who's the fighters, let's find out who can focus, who can be disciplined, who can execute and who can be a great teammate and go from there."
Despite the winless start to the season, and the fact that Payne admits that a handful of his own players have not bought into what he is selling, he isn't going to change the way he operates. He is still set in establishing his culture, one that is built on "practicing like our life depends on it," and he isn't going to waiver his approach to it no matter what happens and no matter how loud the outside noise gets.
"Am I changing? I pray not. Am I discouraged? No. Am I wavering? No. Am I stressed? No. Am I worried about what the outside world is saying about me? No. I got a job to do. I'm obligated to this community. I'm obligated to this university. I'm obligated to these kids, to make sure that I do everything in my power to prepare them for success.
"I'm changing the culture. It's my culture, on my terms, and I feel like I'm doing it to make them successful basketball players, but more importantly, successful men. I'm not gonna second guess that."
(Photo of Kenny Payne: Sam Upshaw Jr. - Courier Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK)
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