What should Louisville fans expect?

A proud program gazes into the abyss

Photo credit: Louisville Athletics

The worst I’ve ever felt for Louisville — maybe the worst I’ve ever felt for any ostensibly vaunted power conference program ever — was on Valentine’s Day 2023.

The Cardinals were deep in the heart of their worst season since 1941, which is to say their worst season of all time. They’d won three games by mid-February. They had become a laughingstock, a meme. They were far enough along in the disaster that you could excuse the players (and, hell, even the coaches) for quiet-quitting the entire idea of competitive basketball. Go through the motions and get the nightmare over with. You could forgive them for that.

And yet, the night of Valentine’s Day, hosting No. 7 Virginia at home, Louisville played hard. They never looked like a good team — they looked, as ever, like someone put Chicago State in Louisville uniforms for some sort of wacky promotion — but they were unquestionably locked in. They played with passion, clarity, and energy. They did little things right. They battled.

Virginia’s 14-2 run before halftime erased Louisville’s hard-earned first-half lead, but the underdogs hung in. The Cardinals were losing 55-45 with five minutes left to play, but they found a halting path back into the game. Thanks to their physical persistence, some ugly Virginia offense and a few missed free throws, Louisville had a chance to take a top 10 team to overtime on its final possession of the game — a game all of a sudden played with, and for, an immense amount of pride.

This was that final possession:

Unless you’re a Kentucky fan, it is impossible to watch that clip and not feel deflated. The way an empty Yum! Center, a shell of its former self, musters some real noise, which evaporates immediately when the shot goes up. The way Virginia — who we would soon discover was playing some of the worst basketball of its season in February, who lost by 15 at Boston College the following game — casually turns on the defensive pressure, like a group of former high school players closing out a pickup run against awkward kids who had hit a couple of lucky 3s. The way the ball slips harmlessly off the rim. The way the color analyst sighs.

It’s depressing, even for the neutral. Now imagine if you actually cared about Louisville.

On Monday, Louisville fans took another blow. Star recruit Trentyn Flowers, the No. 30-ranked player in the class of 2023 (per 247 Sports), decommitted, announcing that he would go play pro ball in Australia instead. The merits of this move are debatable for the player — marginal NBA prospects do not simply walk into the NBL — but they are devastating for Louisville fans, who lost what was supposed to be an exciting young piece of next year’s team to a questionable professional decision and then had to endure yet another hearty round of Twitter goofs at their expense.

The question here is: How much more of this can Louisville fans take?

What should the rabid supporters of a proud, hugely resourced program — which effectively operates as the quasi-pro sporting centerpiece of an entire 1.3 million-person metropolitan area — expect in year two of Kenny Payne? What should they demand? After last year’s disaster, what would be enough for Payne to keep his job? What would get Louisville fans actually excited again? How long can the gallows humor go on?

To answer that, we should probably start with how good we think Louisville can be. It is not an easy question to answer.