The Louisville Cardinals lost by 19 points at home against the Kentucky Wildcats on Thursday evening, dropping to 5-7 on the year.
The team now has a 13 day gap before they take on Virginia January 3, a gap many felt would give Louisville athletic director Josh Heird an opportunity to fire Payne and find an interim coach to finish out the season before conducting a nationwide search to get this program back on the right track.
However, Heird chose to address rumors that Payne’s time is coming to a close on Friday morning, standing behind his coach for the time being.
“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 said, per WDRB’s Eric Crawford. “And I’m going to do what I do with every one of our programs, which is evaluate what’s happening throughout the season.”
Payne’s record since taking over as the Cardinals head coach now sits at 9-35, and losses this season to DePaul and Arkansas State as well as the mishandling of Koron Davis’ dismissal from the program have caused a tidal wave of criticism from the very proud Louisville fanbase.
Louisville is still paying former head coach Chris Mack $133,333 per month until January 2025 as part of his payout after getting let go in January of 2022, and buying out Payne would be a big financial commitment for this program. Of course, continuing to lose basketball games and alienate fans and donors isn’t going to help the program’s financial situation either, making this a very delicate and difficult situation for Heird.
While Payne’s job appears safe through the new year, Heird did make it clear evaluation will happen on a constant basis, and indeed a dismissal agreement could happen before the end of the basketball season depending how things go in conference play.