Louisville fans hoping for a new basketball coach will have to wait. Cardinals athletic director Josh Heird on Friday, hours after the team's demoralizing 95-76 loss to No. 9 Kentucky to push Louisville to 5-7 on the season, said he is sticking with embattled coach Kenny Payne amidst a troubling start to the season, at least for now.
"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 via WDRB. "And I'm going to do what I do with every one of our programs, which is evaluate what's happening throughout the season."
Heird empathized with impatient fans who have grown weary of the basketball program under Payne and called the situation "extremely, extremely frustrating. But even as the team fell to 9-35 Thursday in Payne's year-plus at the helm of the program, Heird stood by the coach he hired a year ago, though he made it clear that for Payne it may be an uphill battle to winning back momentum and trust from fans after missteps and gaffes both on and off the court.
"When it comes to trying to create some positive momentum (with) every action, every word matters," he said. "I always go back and say that in any public job -- I don't think it's necessarily sports, it could be politics -- everything you do is judged. There is no, 'Eh, that was OK.' And if you haven't made some deposits in the bank, people aren't going to give you the benefit of the doubt.
"Results matter," Heird said. "They absolutely do. So, to answer your question of is there a way to turn the temperature down outside of winning basketball games? I think that's going to be hard to do to be honest with you."
Payne's Cardinals program made school history with its worst-ever start -- and worst-ever finish -- after going 4-28 in 2022-23. The team has already topped its win total from last season, but it has yet to beat a team ranked better than 100 in KenPom.com. With ACC play set to start on Jan. 3 with a game at Virginia, the Cardinals are projected to lose all but one of its remaining 19 games.
