Get ready for an odd edition of the Kentucky-Louisville rivalry. How weird will it be?
It probably seems an eternity to Louisville fans, but it’s been only 18 months since the future of Cardinals basketball looked oh so bright.
The stars were out on a June day last year, flocking to the Kentucky Exposition Center to show their support for new head coach Kenny Payne as two coveted recruits — potentially program-changing prospects for the Cards — came to town. Payne had been on the job for less than three months, but this stop on the Nike EYBL schedule fell outside of an NCAA evaluation period, meaning college coaches couldn’t attend the games.
The Louisville basketball program was there in full force anyway.
While D.J. Wagner and Aaron Bradshaw did their thing out on the court, the sidelines were packed with Louisville greats. Pervis Ellison and Darrell Griffith — the Final Four MVPs of both U of L national title teams in the 1980s — were there. So was Milt Wagner, another former Cardinals star, D.J.’s grandfather, and a recently named member of Payne’s new staff. Other ex-Cards were sprinkled throughout the makeshift bleachers, talking among themselves and getting a look at, seemingly, the next big stars in their program’s history.
“That was great, man,” Ellison told the Herald-Leader that night. “It’s just the fact that everybody is supportive and behind Kenny. The university — I’ve got to give them credit, because they made a tremendous selection in picking him as the coach to get this program back. And I know he’s going to do a fantastic job, because he’s going to have the support of the city, former players — everybody’s behind him.”
The dream started falling apart before Payne, a former U of L star himself, coached his first game.
On the night of rival Kentucky’s Big Blue Madness four months later, Bradshaw — a versatile 7-foot-1 player and arguably the highest-upside recruit in the class — committed to the Wildcats.
Two weeks later, the Cardinals played their first exhibition game of the Payne era. They lost to Lenoir-Rhyne, a Division II school, leaving the Yum Center stunned. Ten days after that, Louisville lost its season opener to Bellarmine. Three days later, Wright State walked into the Yum Center and walked out as winners.
And then came the dagger.
Less than 48 hours after Louisville dropped to 0-2 on the season, Wagner dropped the bomb — committing to John Calipari and Kentucky over his family ties at Louisville. His grandfather was on Payne’s staff. His Nike league program director was Ellison, a former teammate, longtime friend and vocal ally of the new U of L coach.
Wagner’s dad, Dajuan, had played at Memphis for Calipari — who hired Milt onto his staff before Dajuan’s commitment — and his older brother, Kareem Watkins, was a walk-on with the Wildcats, but Louisville had put on the full-court press and was viewed by many as the frontrunner for much of the summer preceding Wagner’s decision.
“My grandfather was always my grandfather throughout the process,” the 17-year-old Wagner told ESPN that day. “He never tried to recruit me. He always said what’s best for me. He’s been a mentor in my life and he’s helped develop me into the player and person that I am. He will always be family first. Nothing but love for him.”
The next day, Louisville lost at home to Appalachian State.
The Cardinals lost six more games after that — starting the season 0-9 — before Payne, a longtime assistant at Kentucky, got his first victory as a college head coach, a win over Western Kentucky coming exactly one month after Wagner picked UK and gave Calipari the nation’s No. 1 recruiting class yet again.
A nightmare scenario was unfolding. Louisville finished with an unthinkable 4-28 record.
Things have only gotten worse, even if the Cards are a little bit better on the court.
Going into Thursday night’s game — what is shaping up to be one of the weirdest editions of the Kentucky-Louisville rivalry — the two schools are on different trajectories.
Louisville has a 5-6 record with some terrible losses — plus another exhibition defeat to a D2 school; this time it was Kentucky Wesleyan — and UK is ranked in the top 10 nationally for the first time in more than a year, the Wildcats boasting one of college basketball’s most potent offenses and one of the sport’s most exciting teams.
Wagner and Bradshaw are starting for Kentucky, leaders of Calipari’s latest fun bunch.
“I’m coming there to win,” Wagner said on the day of his college commitment. “Winning comes first with me, and I want to help Kentucky win as much as possible.”
An odd edition of Kentucky vs. Louisville
How weird is it going to get Thursday night in the Yum Center?
Let us count the ways.
When Wagner and Bradshaw committed to Kentucky, the schedule rotation was already set. The almost certain one-and-done players knew their only game against Louisville would be on the road. And it was expected as soon as they pledged to the Wildcats that they would be booed for as long as they were in the building when this night finally came.
Instead, they might find a welcoming crowd waiting for them in Louisville.
What’s typically a red-clad and raucous Yum Center — with some blue scattered throughout the stands — for this rivalry game every two years might look a whole lot different Thursday night.
The actual attendance for U of L’s home games so far — according to the results of open records requests filed by Louisville-based media outlets — has been abysmal. The Cardinals’ game against Arkansas State last week — another U of L loss — drew only 4,317 fans.
None of the teams Louisville has hosted this season has been Kentucky, obviously, but the fan base has checked out to such a degree that there’s been chatter for weeks of a big blue takeover of enemy territory. Could there actually be more blue than red in Yum on Thursday?
U of L has been promoting a “red out” for the rivalry game. A tweet from the program’s official account Tuesday morning hyped the effort and instructed students where they could pick up red shirts for free to join in on the fun. The comments flowed in quickly, one response after another — including some from U of L fans — mocking the objective.
“Students? They’ve all left for Christmas break,” read one tweet from a Louisville fan. “The arena is gonna be 70% blue sadly.”
That would be an odd sight. It wouldn’t be the only one.
Louisville’s leading scorer this season is Skyy Clark, who signed with UK as a high school senior but backed out of that commitment before arriving on campus. Clark instead went to Illinois, left that program midway through his freshman year and ended up at Louisville, where he’ll lead the Cards against what would have been his former team Thursday night.
And if that night goes poorly, could it be Payne’s last game as coach of his alma mater?
That’s not a stretch.
The situation seemed dire following the loss to Arkansas State last week — that one coming four days after a defeat at the hands of a dreadful DePaul team — and the buzz was deafening out of Louisville that Payne wouldn’t make it to the weekend. Friday was supposedly the day for the official announcement of his ouster.
With that rumor spreading, another odd thing happened. It was announced that Karter Knox — a top-15 recruit in the 2024 class and a major target of both UK and U of L — would be taking an official visit to Louisville that weekend. Knox is the younger brother of former UK star Kevin Knox, and their father has often expressed his loyalty to both Calipari and Payne, the latter of whom was Kevin’s primary recruiter at Kentucky, which landed a surprise commitment from the five-star prospect back in 2017.
“KP really wanted (me) to come there. So I went in, scheduled a visit,” Karter Knox told reporters Friday. “Hopefully, if I do go there, (I) can potentially change the program, turn the program around. It’s going pretty rough, but yeah.”
Knox showed up on campus. Payne was still U of L’s head coach when he arrived. And the 18-year-old watched Louisville beat Pepperdine 85-63 on Sunday, the largest margin of victory of the Payne era.
What’s next for Kenny Payne?
Perhaps Knox’s decision — and the Louisville win that followed — bought Payne a little more time. There was also word of an imminent Knox commitment to the Cards spreading through basketball circles over the weekend, a move that might get Payne through the rest of the season, at least. That commitment hasn’t happened. And Louisville has zero signees for the 2024 class, another ominous sign for the second-year coach’s future with the program.
This is just scratching the surface of the weirdness that’s been happening this season. Tales of star recruit Trentyn Flowers’ abrupt departure, Ty-Laur Johnson’s tights controversy, Koron Davis’ odd dismissal, some head-scratching postgame comments and additional bad losses have all warranted their own retellings over the past few months.
The Yum Center boo-birds waiting for Wagner and Bradshaw to take the court Thursday apparently couldn’t wait that long, and those jeers have already been let loose on Payne and their own Cardinals over the course of recent games.
It’s unclear what atmosphere awaits the Cats and Cards in Louisville this time around, but it’s sure to be unlike any other that this rivalry has seen on a school’s home court. It’s also unclear what U of L’s program will look like in the aftermath of whatever happens in the Yum Center on Thursday night.
The first question asked of Payne following Sunday’s win over Pepperdine: “With all the speculation going around, was there any sense that you were coaching for your job today? Did you feel like that?”
Payne answered with a grin.
“I did not feel like that,” he said. “But I wouldn’t feel like that, no matter what. I go out, and I focus on the team and the guys. I didn’t come here for me. I came here for them. And for this community.”
Payne said Sunday that he has had recent conversations with Louisville athletics director Josh Heird, who has remained publicly silent amid calls to oust his highest-profile head coach, about taking the program to the “next level” during his tenure.
“How do we make sure that we are playing in a way that we build momentum — not just within the program, but in the community — so that people are proud about this program?” Payne said of those talks. “I believe Josh wants us to be good. He wants us to make this fan base proud. And I know he wants for the guys to enjoy being here. And I have the same goals.”
Payne also said Sunday that he’s talked to his players about the “noise” outside the program during these times of uncertainty over his own job status. That noise has been deafening. And it’s unlikely to subside anytime soon.
“For me — I guess because I’m 57 years old and been around a lot of basketball and a lot of different scenarios — I learned at an earlier age that if you’re motivated by critics or praise, you set yourself up to be heartbroken,” Payne said. “I think it’s important that people understand that I am emotionally committed to this program. And at the end of the day, young people need to know what that looks, what that feels like — to have a program, to be a part of something — and have people criticize you. They need to understand that.
“It’s easy in a social media age to want all the praise. But what happens when you get the critics, and you get the people jumping off the bandwagon? You have to have your faith. You have to believe in something bigger than you. And I try to be an example for that. But young people, it’s hard to tell at times if they’re really paying attention to it. I talk about it, and I hope that they’re learning a lesson. In a day and age of NIL and all this other stuff that’s going on — social media — that you have to be focused on why you’re here. You gotta be focused on what your job is. You have to be focused on character. And you don’t waver from that, at any cost.
“So, that’s my belief, and I hope that they are learning that.”
Thursday
No. 9 Kentucky at Louisville
When: 6 p.m.
TV: ESPN
Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1
Records: Kentucky 8-2, Louisville 5-6
Series: Kentucky leads 38-17
Last meeting: Kentucky won 86-63 on Dec. 31, 2022, in Lexington
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