Sources told ESPN that the Louisville Cardinals will officially announce Kenny Payne as their next men’s basketball coach at a Friday morning press conference.
Payne has been considered the favorite since Louisville began looking for a replacement for Chris Mack in January. Interim athletic director Josh Heird considered a number of other candidates throughout the search, including UCLA’s Mick Cronin and Baylor’s Scott Drew, but Payne remained the top choice throughout the process, sources told ESPN.
A Mississippi native who played college in Louisville, Payne won a national championship with the Cardinals in 1986 before being selected in the first round of the 1989 NBA draft.
He is known as one of the elite recruiters in college basketball.
Payne began his coaching career as an assistant coach in Oregon and then spent ten years as an assistant coach to John Calipari in Kentucky. He has consistently helped run elite recruiting courses, and Kentucky ranked first in the recruiting class in 2010, 2011, 2013, 2016, and 2020. Payne also developed a reputation for helping improve a number of post players during his time at Lexington.
Payne has spent the last two seasons as an assistant with the New York Knicks.
He will replace Mack, who parted ways with Louisville in late January. The Cardinals were 11-9 at the time of Mack’s departure and finished 13-19 this season. Under Mack, Louisville went to the NCAA Tournament in 2019 and won 24-7 in 2020 before the NCAA Tournament was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.