Kenny Payne Made a Bad Loss Worse in his Press Conference

Kenny Payne was a great assistant coach at Kentucky. He is clearly not a good head basketball coach. Is he the worst college basketball hire since 2000? Jeff Goodman thinks so, but that’s at least up for debate. What’s not in doubt is the Louisville basketball coach’s ability to make a bad situation worse every time he talks into a microphone.

Louisville lost to North Carolina. That was to be expected. The Cards were 21.5-point underdogs. Kenny Payne has been a 15+ point underdog 15 times in two years. It only happened three other times at Louisville since 1992.

Even though they covered the spread in a 16-point loss, things are bad at Louisville. The problem is people are unsure if Kenny Payne actually knows how bad it is.

In his postgame press conference, Payne was asked to compare his rebuild to what Hubert Davis did at North Carolina. It’s an odd question considering North Carolina went to a Final Four in Davis’ first season and Payne won four games. That odd question produced an even crazier response.

“Well, I didn’t inherit the same thing he inherited,” Payne said. “What I inherited was a broken something and my job is to clean it up. To answer your question, I don’t really know exactly, but to me, this is to me, in my world, inheriting what I inherited, this is really year one for me because this is the first time I get to bring my players in and start the process of rebuilding a program. But that’s just to me. Other people may see that differently. I don’t know but that’s how I feel about it. I wish I inherited something similar to what Hubert inherited because I think he started out slow but as the year went on he had a great year.”

Kenny is right. Other people, all of the people see it differently.

Kenny Payne was asked…. How long is enough time to establish what a coach wants to establish in a job?

"Inheriting what I inherited… this is really year 1 to me."

It was in comparison to Hubert Davis at North Carolina. @WHAS11 pic.twitter.com/d9CKcpBtO3

— Kent Spencer (@WHAS11Kent) January 18, 2024

Even if this is his “first season,” Louisville is 6-11 with a 1-5 record in a bad ACC. That is still unacceptable for that program’s standards.

During his time at Kentucky, Kenny Payne was a delightful change of pace whenever he stepped to the podium for a press conference. During this brief tenure at his alma mater, he continually makes bad situations worse whenever he speaks. Louisville fans are in a freefall and it’s getting worse before it gets better. It’s a shame, a real shame.

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