CRAWFORD | Amid struggles, Louisville AD Heird says Payne will continue as coach

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – After Louisville’s loss to Kentucky on Thursday night in the KFC Yum! Center, Louisville athletic director Josh Heird, as he usually does, made the rounds of the locker room. After that, he spoke for a while with his head coach, Kenny Payne.

The two have talked a good bit in recent weeks, as rumors of Payne’s imminent dismissal were reported by some national media outlets. Heird declined to address those rumors, because they didn’t come from him – and because they were not accurate.

On Friday morning, Heird said his peace publicly.

“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. “And I'm going to do what I do with every one of our programs, which is evaluate what's happening throughout the season.”

To put it more clearly, Payne, who fell to 9-35 with Thursday’s 95-76 loss to Kentucky, is going to get more time. Heird said he has been frustrated by some things he has seen and heard. There have been missteps, which neither Payne nor Heird has attempted to gloss over.

But Heird said in the end, he believes that the players and program are best served by allowing Payne to proceed.

Heird said he finds the situation the basketball program is in -- losses mounting, attendance lagging -- to be “extremely, extremely frustrating.”

“I want this basketball team to be great,” he said. “And it's a long way from that right now. So I absolutely understand (fan) frustrations. I live it. You know, this is this is my job ... I want us to be a great basketball program, and I'm going to work every day to try to get us back to that point. And I have confidence that we can.”

Whether it was miscommunications in the Koron Davis situation or other things Payne has said in news conferences that sent fans howling, Heird has had various levels of frustration. He stepped in to help settle matters after Davis’ dismissal from the team. And his level of concern after the losses to DePaul and Arkansas State were very high.

At the same time, Heird couches the situation that coaches – and other public employees – find themselves in as one of deposits and withdrawals. And he says Payne needs to make more deposits.

Winning, in the end, is the only thing that will turn the temperature down on the present situation.

“When it comes to trying to create some positive momentum 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. You know, there might be something that was said that was -- I don't want to call it irrelevant, but just there wasn't there wasn't much there -- but if you haven't created that positive momentum and made some deposits with wins, people are going to say that's a negative. Results matter. 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.”

I asked Heird what success will look like, if there are concrete steps that Payne has promised for improvement, or that he has set forth as requirements.

“You know, the discussions that that I have with any of our head coaches are always centered around how do we make the program better?” Heird said. “And what can we do to get us to where we want to go? And that's what those conversations have been. They've centered around what can I do better? What can Kenny do better? What can your staff do better? You know, all of those things combined to see what we can do to get this program headed in the right direction.”

Heird said that the wishes of the players is a factor in his thinking. It’s not the deciding factor, but it isn’t insignificant.

“I think, if there's anything that is going to make me significantly reconsider the timeline, or the timeframe for a coach, it's going to be if there's overwhelming negativity, or lack of support in the locker room,” he said. “And that is that is not the case right now.”

Brandon Huntley-Hatfield and Skyy Clark spoke in defense of Payne after Thursday's loss.

"With players, we're still walking with KP," Clark said.

"Forever," Huntley-Hatfield added.

This isn’t, at least publicly, a guarantee that Payne will be the coach for the remainder of the season. Heird went out of his way to say that evaluation will be “constant.” But this also isn’t a topic that will be revisited weekly in the public. While Payne is working under pressure, he’s not working necessarily on a game-by-game basis.

No single game will determine his fate. Removing a coach during the season introduces an element of chaos into a program. It happened with Louisville when Chris Mack departed. It happened with the program when Rick Pitino was removed.

What the way forward will be for Louisville isn’t clear. But it is clear Heird would like for it not to involve chaos. The decision, he said, in the end is his. In her time at Louisville, Heird said U of L president Kim Schatzel has expressed confidence in his ability to do what is right for the athletics program.

And he feels like Payne knows what is required of him moving forward.

“I feel confident that Kenny knows where I am, relative to the evaluation of the program,” Heird said. “And that, I think, is one of the things that is hard for anyone to understand. We can't all be involved in every conversation. But I think I've done a good job of being extremely honest with our head coaches. And that sure isn't going to change, as long as I'm in this position. So, Kenny and I continue to have dialogue, and he understands where he is relative to the head coaching position here.”

For now, that position remains on the bench, looking for progress.

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