This is what so many wanted. Louisville’s post-Pitino world was one of lost identity. Program alum David Padgett admirably navigated the tumult of 2017-18 as interim coach but wasn’t trendy enough to be the school’s long-term option. Chris Mack was the hottest name on the market, so Louisville went and got him. The marriage was hailed nationally as a can’t-miss hire in March 2018. Twenty-one months later, Mack coached the No. 1-ranked Cards to a home win over No. 4 Michigan in front of 21,674 packed shoulder-to-shoulder in December 2019.

This was a new era.

Until it wasn’t.

Mack didn’t make it to the end of Year 4 in his seven-year contract, getting pushed out 14 games into the 2021-22 season amid another NCAA investigation and player discontent. Another ugly ending. Another round of preposterous headlines. (Seriously, what other program has had two head coaches entangled in extortion cases?)

Many around Louisville say that then-interim athletic director Josh Heird had little choice in the 2022 coaching search. Trustees, ex-players, boosters — most wanted Payne. Louisville is a place where the streets go backward, where some loyalists and ex-players are still upset Crum was forced into retirement in 2001, and others still regularly relitigate Pitino’s various cause célèbres. The school needed someone to tie its binds.

Payne, 57, was born and raised in southeast Mississippi but is a son of Louisville. He was a freshman on Crum’s 1986 national championship team. He played with legends Billy Thompson, Milt Wagner and Pervis Ellison. He led the program to the Sweet 16 in 1988 and ’89. He carried all imaginable Card credentials and had a coaching résumé to go with them. Payne honed his recruiting chops for years as an assistant coach at Oregon and Kentucky, then sharpened his coaching prowess with a few seasons in the NBA

This was the right man at the right time for Louisville. More impactfully, Payne stood as the first Black head coach for a program with a long history of racial barrier-breaking. The size and scale of his hiring wasn’t lost on him.

“It’s bigger than me,” Payne told The Athletic in October 2022. “That’s the best way to say it: It’s bigger than me. It’s a lot.”

That was only 14 months ago.

Today’s version of college basketball, with its transfer portal and its Name, Image and Likeness jockeying, comes with an inherent stress of assembling talent as fast as possible and winning games now, not later. Louisville saw Payne as a tap to a keg of all readily available talent. His 10-year tenure at Kentucky turned him into a near-mythic figure. He was critical in landing and developing Anthony Davis and other five-star future NBA lottery picks. He coached nine big men who were drafted in the lottery, including two No. 1 overall picks. He was best friends with basketball’s ultimate power broker — William “Worldwide” Wesley. NBA All-Star Karl-Anthony Towns once called Payne “the horse beneath the jockey driving Kentucky basketball.”

The math was easy. If Payne did that at Kentucky, imagine what he’d do on his own horse in Louisville.

Immediately after the hiring, several top-rated recruits were suddenly rumored to be heavily interested in Louisville. In May 2022, Payne hired Milt Wagner, his former teammate and U of L luminary, as the program’s director of player development and alumni relations. Wagner’s grandson, D.J., happened to be the No. 1 recruit in the country at the time.

The flood of talent to Louisville felt all but imminent.

But things aren’t so simple.

Payne’s first recruiting class, cobbled together late, ranked a respectable 26th in the 247Sports Composite rankings but lacked a top-50 prospect. He mined the portal for two pieces, notably Tennessee transfer Brandon Huntley-Hatfield. But it wasn’t enough. The Cards’ 2022-23 roster, with a handful of returnees, had 10 scholarship players. They won four games. Losses included an exhibition to Division II Lenoir-Rhyne and regular-season upsets by Bellarmine, Wright State, Appalachian State and Lipscomb. They went 2-18 in the ACC and finished 290th in KenPom’s ratings. The next closest high-major was California at 270.

On top of the losses, things soured through Year 1 as, one by one, all that rumored incoming five-star talent went elsewhere. D.J. Wagner not only declined Louisville’s scholarship but also committed to Kentucky.

What’s gone wrong? Theories abound among those in grassroots basketball. About Payne spending his entire coaching career at Nike schools (Oregon and Kentucky) and now being under the Adidas umbrella. About Payne and assistant coaches Danny Manning, Nolan Smith and Josh Jamieson not pounding the pavement. Whatever the reason, the flood hasn’t come.

Seven scholarship players entered the transfer portal in Payne’s first offseason, including three captains. Then came a more significant loss. Trentyn Flowers, a five-star recruit who reclassified to enroll early at Louisville and headlined the Cards’ five-player 2023 recruiting class, opted out of his commitment. He did so after practicing with the team for weeks last summer. A potential starter, Flowers left the program on Aug. 14 and signed with the Adelaide 36ers of the National Basketball League in Australia.

The 2023-24 Louisville roster would feature nine new players, including key sophomore transfers Skyy Clark (Illinois) and Tre White (USC) and a freshman class that, despite Flowers’ departure, ranked No. 6 by 247Sports. Most agreed the roster was upgraded.

Eight current Louisville players entered college as top-100 players in 247Sports Composite recruiting rankings. Four of them — Huntley-Hatfield, Dennis Evans, Clark and White — ranked in the top 50. The Cards are exceedingly young, though. The roster includes nine freshmen and sophomores. Payne’s team ranks 301st in the country in DI experience, averaging 1.19 years. The only other high-major programs with less experience are UCLA and Notre Dame.

It was a year late, but, even without an influx of five-stars, this is what Louisville theoretically signed up for with Payne. Accumulate young talent, go through some growing pains, rebuild the program and climb back to the top of the ACC in a few years.

Luke Hancock, the hero of Louisville’s 2013 national title and now an analyst for ACC Network, says he sees “some pieces of what could be a good team” and wonders, if this group stayed mostly intact, grew a year older, added a top recruit or two and a couple veteran transfers, what might that look like?

“It’s not that I’m grasping at straws here,” Hancock says. “There are real positives. It ​​could be dramatically better going into Year 3. But are Louisville fans going to give them enough time for all that to really come to fruition? It doesn’t seem like it.”

Therein lies the rub. In only 14 months, things went so bad, so fast, that few are willing to see where this will go. If this were Year 1, maybe some would be willing to ride things out.

But it is not Year 1.

Losing is one thing. Being embarrassed is another.

Koron Davis could be seen right out in the open. Some fans recognized the 6-foot-7 guard from the program’s annual preseason scrimmage. Now he was sitting in the Yum! stands.

Nothing made sense. Davis was recruited to bolster the Louisville backcourt. He played junior college ball at Paris (Texas) Community College and Los Angeles Southwest College, and committed to the Cards in January 2023 after Payne visited him in LA. He was considered a nice pickup and a potential contributor.

But Davis has never suited up for a game. Payne delivered cryptic explanations. He said Davis was not in trouble, and was still part of the team, but was told not to come to games. Rumors swirled that he’d been involved in a practice confrontation with Payne.

Things turned more bizarre on Dec. 13. Louisville issued a statement announcing Davis was transferring, marking an abrupt end to the saga. Except then Davis, who posted a picture of his first-semester report card on social media that same morning, refuted the tweet, saying, “I never asked to transfer.”

Louisville issued a second release, this time saying Davis was dismissed from the program.

So what went wrong? In an interview with The Athletic, Davis says the practice at the root of the matter occurred in mid-November. That day, in a post-practice huddle, Payne told the group Davis bad-mouthed the team. “He told my teammates: ‘Koron said f— all y’all.’” Davis says. “Things escalated from there, but never turned physical.”

In a separate interview with The Athletic, a current Louisville player, granted anonymity so as to corroborate events without facing repercussions from the program, confirmed Davis’ retelling of the event.

Davis’ status with the team was limited after that day, but he was still part of the program. He maintained access to facilities, remained enrolled, and conducted occasional individual workouts with coaches. Program sources push back on the idea of a single incident being at the root of Davis’ quasi-suspension, but what’s clear is no one understood the terms.

Teammates were confused. So were fans and media. And athletic department officials. In an already combustible equation of a coach on the hot seat and a team losing games, now came controversy.

“It was so weird how they handled it,” the current player says.

Davis requested a meeting with Heird and spoke to the Louisville AD on Dec. 6. Heird, who confirms this meeting, asked Davis if he wanted to remain at the school. Davis responded yes. Heird told Davis he would speak to Payne.

Soon after, according to the current Louisville team member, some players met with Payne and the coaching staff. They advocated for Davis to rejoin the team, saying he could be a valuable player. Moreover, they said the drama surrounding the situation was distracting and could be avoided if Davis was allowed to sit on the bench. According to the current player, coaches responded by again claiming that Davis had told them he didn’t care about the team and wanted to transfer.

Nothing was any clearer by the end of Dec. 13. Following the loss to Arkansas State, Payne offered no further explanation. Two Louisville players, Huntley-Hatfield and Clark, said they still speak to Davis and support him.

Associate athletic director Zach Greenwell said in a statement to The Athletic on Wednesday that the university would honor Davis’ scholarship.

“All of our head coaches are empowered to make decisions related to their rosters that they believe are in the best interest of their programs as a whole,” he said. “If Koron Davis wishes to transition from being a student-athlete to a student at the University of Louisville, he is welcome to do so and his scholarship will be honored. Should he choose to continue his basketball career elsewhere, we will support his decision and wish him nothing but the best.”

Davis says he plans to remain enrolled at Louisville next semester, then decide where to play in 2024-25.

The handling of the situation — from Payne’s puzzling news conferences, to the poor messaging, to the confusion of Dec. 13 — was, according to an athletic department source, roundly seen as an unnecessary debacle. While some say Payne felt Davis’ long-term future wasn’t at Louisville and wanted to help him land somewhere as a transfer, they simultaneously acknowledge the ordeal could have been dealt with more deftly.

Some felt it marked the first time Payne’s tenure actually embarrassed the school. That this, in the big picture, was an exemplar of a program with broader issues.