Why Louisville basketball can’t afford to hire the wrong head coach this time

Do you remember when the Cardinals consistently proved that they were a perennial basketball program? It seems like eons ago at this point and with the recent failure of Kenny Payne as head coach, Louisville is once again looking for a commander-in-chief.

Since the inception of the Louisville basketball program in 1944 and the Peck Hickman era, which lasted until 1967, the Cardinals were decidedly good, if not great.

With a 66.9 percent winning record, Louisville hadn’t struggled to find success until things hit the fan under Rick Pitino.

Pitino was fired in 2017 and the Cardinals had to vacate their records and titles from 2011 to 2015. This led to the removal of 123 wins, their 2012 Final Four appearance, and the 2013 NCAA Tournament championship.

And it’s only been downhill since.

The Chris Mack “era”

Chris Mack took over the Louisville program after a highly successful nine-year stint as Xavier’s head coach. He signed a seven-year contract for about $28 million.

Mack only lasted four years.

Over his four seasons with the Cardinals, they only appeared in the NCAA Tournament once, where they got knocked out in the Round of 64 in 2019.

Under Mack, the Cardinals went 63-36 overall and 38-23 in conference play.

Louisville and Mack agreed to go their separate ways in the middle of the 2022 season and thus began the Kenny Payne era – if you can call it an era.

The Kenny Payne “era”

This man is arguably the worst head coaching hire that Lousiville has ever seen. Before joining the Cardinals, Payne was an assistant coach for the New York Knicks under Tom Thibodeau.

When he took the reigns of Louisville’s men’s basketball team, big expectations were looming overhead.

Payne failed miserably.

In his first season with the Cardinals, Payne’s squad finished 4-28 overall. Louisville had just two wins in the ACC and finished 15th in the conference standings.

The 2023-24 season was a raucous success filled with eight whole wins.

Payne finished his time as the Lousiville head coach with a 12-52 overall record and an embarrassing first-round loss to NC State in the ACC Tournament.

The next Louisville basketball era

This time around… Louisville has to make the right choice when it comes to its next head coach. The current athletic director is a man named Josh Heird. He was named the Cardinal AD in 2022 after a year of being in the position on an interim basis.

His decision to hire Payne was one of the biggest disappointments in Louisville athletics history and it has subsequently put him on thin ice.

When Lousiville basketball is bad, the fans are mad. When the Cardinal fans are mad, the boosters’ support ends.

Ensuring that the next head coach of the Cardinals is a resounding success is critical to Heird’s tenure as the Louisville athletic director.