Louisville basketball coach Kenny Payne 'not sugarcoating' importance of Kentucky rivalry
Kenny Payne can’t remember who delivered the message.
What the Louisville basketball coach does recall is that it came soon after he arrived at U of L as a player in the summer of 1985. He and his fellow Cardinals freshmen were shooting around at the old Crawford Gym when “a gentleman that was close to the program” gathered them in a huddle for a chat.
“Let me explain to you what Louisville basketball is,” Payne said the man told the newcomers. “No matter what happens in the season, you beat Kentucky, you’re making a lot of people happy.”
It was Payne’s first real introduction to the weight of this state’s biggest basketball rivalry.
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It’s stuck with him.
Through four years as a Louisville player; through 10 seasons as John Calipari’s assistant on the Kentucky staff; into his first season as head coach back at his alma mater.
And now, with the first Cards-Cats game in his new gig set for Saturday, Payne is passing on what he knows.
“It's definitely a big deal,” Louisville freshman Kamari Lands said. “The coaches emphasize it a lot that it's not a normal game. It's a really important game, especially for us and the community here, to beat Kentucky. Even when I first got here, there was a big emphasis, like, 'Beat Kentucky, beat Kentucky.' That's what a lot of people say. So I know how important it is here and I'm definitely ready for it.”
If you’ve watched sports long enough, you’ve rolled your eyes at a coach offering every-game’s-the-same platitudes, insisting that a team treats its heated rivals the same as a ho-hum home game with a no-name.
Not Payne. Not with Louisville-Kentucky.
The Cards’ coach understands why some of his peers downplay rivalries, but it’s not his style.
“I know they want to take the pressure off the kids,” Payne said. “I don't want to do that. I want them to know.”
Some of the Cardinals know it already.
Forward JJ Traynor grew up in Bardstown. His father, Jason Osborne, played at Louisville. When the Cards and Cats played on a weekday, Traynor said, it was “like an off day almost” at school.
And though nobody’s telling Traynor and his teammates what that unknown instructor told Payne — that the Cardinals could go 0-and-whatever as long as they got one against the Wildcats — he knows the potential power of the game for 2-11 Louisville.
“We've had a rough season,” Traynor said. “I don't think (a win) would erase our season or (be a) fresh start, but I think would help us. Big confidence boost. And it would help the city as well, just knowing that we back on and we're ready to change things around.”
It’s a tall task.
No. 19 Kentucky (8-4) if off to a disappointing start, but most of Big Blue’s issues have come against the top teams on their schedule.
UK is 0-3 against opponents ranked in Quad 1 of the NCAA’s NET Rankings. But it’s 5-0 against opponents in Quad 4, where Louisville languishes. The Cats are scoring 37.2 points in the paint, 19.8 fastbreak points and 16.6 points off turnovers in those games.
Anyone knows it’ll take a massive effort for the Cards to pull an upset.
But Payne wants this Louisville team — and every one he coaches in the future — to know that no matter which team’s on top in the rivalry, this game means a little more than the others. He wants his players to learn the lesson he did that summer day in ’85.
He could tell them that it’s just another game. But he won’t.
“I'm not sugarcoating this,” Payne said. “This is a rivalry, and it means a lot to a lot of people. It means a lot to me. It means a lot to Cal. It means a lot to the Kentucky fans. It means a lot to the Louisville fans. It means something to the universities. It means something to the state. It's not just go dribble and shoot a basketball and whatever happens happens. That's not what this is. That may be somewhere else; it's not in the state of Kentucky.”