There hasn’t been much good news surrounding the Louisville men’s basketball team lately.

The Cardinals threw down an alley-oop’s worth of it Wednesday.

Their road upset of Miami was the slam dunk. The following news from The Associated Press, released earlier on Wednesday, was the lob.

To commemorate 75 years of its men’s basketball poll, the AP released a ranking of the sport’s top 25 programs in terms of poll points since its inception in 1949. U of L came in at sixth with 9,493.

Bosting more than 1,900 victories, it sits among college basketball’s top 15 winningest programs.

In story accompanying the all-time poll, the AP’s Dave Skretta called it “a measure of sustained excellence.”

“It takes hiring the right coaches, year after year. A constant stream of great players to replace those that depart,” he added. “It takes luck, to be sure, but also passionate fans, elite facilities, proper marketing and the flexibility to adapt to the times.”

Here’s a look at the top 10:

1. Kentucky (17,852)
2. North Carolina (17,268)
3. Duke (16,897)
4. Kansas (15,430)
5. UCLA (13,073)
6. Louisville (9,493)
7. Arizona (9,277)
8. Indiana (8,796)
9. Syracuse (7,890)
10. Michigan State (7,263)

Per Sports-Reference.com, U of L has appeared in 655 weeks of the AP Top 25. We’re closing in on three years since that’s been the case, however.

The last time the Cards cracked the poll? Jan. 25, 2021, when they moved from unranked to 25th.

What will Louisville basketball’s win over Miami mean? Not much, KenPom says

Take this segment with a grain of salt: Number-crunching hoops statistician Ken Pomeroy’s website gave Louisville a 7% chance of winning at Miami.

But the result didn’t change the Cards’ bleak outlook for the remainder of the 2023-24 season.

KenPom.com favors U of L in only one of its remaining 16 games, a Feb. 21 matchup with Notre Dame at the KFC Yum! Center. The numbers as of Thursday morning said it had a 55% chance of winning and projected a final score of 67-66.

Some more good news: that, technically, is a step in the right direction. Before factoring in the win over the Hurricanes, KenPom did not favor Louisville in any of its remaining games. In that tilt with the Fighting Irish, it had a 50% chance of winning, but Pomeroy’s site still projected a 68-67 loss.

File this under incredibly marginal improvement, too: the Cards went from seven games with a 25% or more win probability to eight; and from two game of 35% or more to four. Their largest jump? From 29% to 35% in the regular-season finale at home against Boston College.

Taking night’s like Wednesday into consideration, KenPom as of Thursday morning predicted U of L would finish the campaign 10-21 overall and 5-15 in ACC play.

Louisville’s comeback win Wednesday was its fourth of the season when trailing at halftime. And unlike the others, the victory came against a high-major opponent with a top-40 NET rating, and a trip to last year’s Final Four to boot, on its home court.

It added legitimacy to a positive trend.

Per unofficial statistician Kelly Dickey, the Cards entered the 2023-24 season having lost 36 straight games in which they trailed at the intermission. They snapped that streak by rallying from eight down against UMBC in the season opener, then followed that up with comeback wins over New Mexico State (-2) and Bellarmine (-5).

That’s not exactly murderers’ row, and the victories can’t distract from the heap of double-digit losses Kenny Payne has lying around. But they are progress nonetheless.