From recruit to player to coach, Kenny Payne has long been part of UK-Louisville rivalry

On Saturday afternoon, Kenny Payne returns to Rupp Arena, the place he called his home court for twice as long as any other stop along his basketball career.

Of course, Payne will be coming to Lexington this weekend on the other side of the Kentucky-Louisville rivalry. That won’t be a new feeling for the 56-year-old who has seen battles between the Cats and the Cards from both angles.

Payne is in his first season as the Louisville head coach. Before that, he was an assistant coach at Kentucky for 10 seasons under John Calipari. And 25 years before he arrived in Lexington as part of the UK coaching staff, he arrived in Louisville as a member of the Cardinals’ team.

As a teenager, Payne emerged as part of the UK-Louisville rivalry before ever setting foot in the state.

A highly touted prospect from Laurel, Miss., Payne’s recruitment was ultimately a three-way race between Mississippi State, Louisville and Kentucky.

One of the final nationally renowned prospects in the 1985 class to make a college decision, Payne’s process stretched well into the spring. Recruiting coverage wasn’t as widespread or as closely followed as it is now, but Payne’s status as one of the top available prospects as elite teams were finalizing their rosters drew considerable attention at the time.

Newspapers in Kentucky closely followed the Mississippi standout as UK and Louisville pursued him.

In the latter stages of that process, UK head coach Joe B. Hall announced his retirement immediately following the Wildcats’ loss to St. John’s in the NCAA Tournament. Six days later, Payne’s coach was quoted in the Herald-Leader as saying that Hall’s departure could hurt the Cats’ chances to land the 6-foot-8 forward.

“Wanting to know who he’ll play for means a lot,” said Northeast Jones (Miss.) head coach Keith Robinson, noting Payne’s interest in the Cats. “He’s really impressed with what basketball stands for at Kentucky. He was really in awe.”

Payne had taken his official visit to UK in late February, a trip centered on the Wildcats’ final home game of the season, a 92-67 victory over Tennessee in what turned out to be Hall’s last home game in charge of the Wildcats.

Five days after that statement from Payne’s high school coach, UK hired Eddie Sutton. Among Sutton’s first documented plans were to visit Payne, who had averaged 32.6 points and 15.4 rebounds per game as a senior, in his home state of Mississippi.

About a week after Sutton’s hire, the Herald-Leader published a list of 40 top recruits in the 1985 class, and only five of them were still undecided. One was Payne. (Two others were Pervis Ellison and Glen Rice.) And Payne’s list remained the same: UK, Louisville or Mississippi State.

In late April, Payne came to Louisville to play in the Derby Festival Classic, where he tallied 14 points and 10 rebounds as the all-star game’s only undecided participant.

A few days after that, he was ready to announce a college decision.

On April 24, 1985, Payne revealed his commitment to Louisville in his high school library. He acknowledged that UK and Mississippi State were the next two schools on his list — “in no certain order,” he said — but that he’d be playing for the Cardinals.

“They are planning on winning the NCAA (Tournament) next year, and I want to play on a team that wants to win,” Payne said that night. “… I just thought Louisville was the best place for me.”

Exactly one week earlier, Ellison had announced his own commitment to the Cards. Before that, Louisville had signed Tony Kimbro, a Seneca standout and that year’s Kentucky Mr. Basketball.

“U of L lands Payne to complete recruiting bonanza,” read the headline across the top of the Courier-Journal’s sports section.

KP’s first Kentucky game

Payne’s first season in Louisville was an eventful one, but his first taste of the UK-U of L rivalry was not.

The freshman began his career on a roster that featured 16 players, including several talented returnees, and that left relatively little playing time for the newcomer. “He’s got an excellent attitude,” U of L head coach Denny Crum said ahead of that season. “He’s a happy-go-lucky kid. He loves to play.”

Payne played just two minutes in his first game against Kentucky, with the No. 13 Wildcats defeating the No. 15 Cardinals 69-64 in Rupp Arena. He missed both of the shots he took in that one and didn’t score a point.

Several days later — after U of L had defeated Eastern Kentucky 86-55 — Payne reflected on his first rivalry game.

“After the Kentucky game, I couldn’t even show my face,” the freshman said. “I was really embarrassed. Nobody wanted our autographs. People were down on us. The heat was on. Even Coach Crum got after us. He told us that his teams don’t get embarrassed and things were going to change.”

Things changed. And the Cardinals would be signing plenty of autographs a few months later.

Louisville went on to win the national championship, winning nine straight games to end the regular season, entering the NCAA Tournament as a 2 seed and beating No. 1-seeded Duke in the title game. (That was Mike Krzyzewski’s sixth season in charge of the Blue Devils and his first of 13 Final Four appearances).

As a freshman, Payne averaged 3.6 points and 1.7 rebounds in 8.9 minutes per game.

Rout in Freedom Hall

Payne made a bigger contribution in his second game against the Wildcats, but the team result was about as forgettable as it gets.

Kentucky defeated the defending national champions 85-51 with Payne, who had made his first career start four days earlier in a loss to Indiana, scoring seven points in 17 minutes.

Ellison — the Final Four’s most outstanding player as a freshman the season before — scored just four points. The Cards went 21-for-58 from the floor, and no Louisville player had more than 10 points. Meanwhile, Rex Chapman scored 26 points for the Cats, who went 11-for-17 from three-point range.

To this day, that 34-point win for Kentucky is the largest margin of victory in the series. And it happened in Freedom Hall.

“They just beat us every way you can beat a team,” Crum said. “That’s the way life is sometimes.”

Payne averaged 4.2 points and 2.5 rebounds in 12.3 minutes per game with five total starts that season, and Louisville missed the NCAA Tournament with an 18-14 record.

A thriller in Rupp

Payne’s next meeting with the Wildcats came early in the 1987-88 season, with Kentucky at No. 1 in the national poll and the Cardinals coming into Rupp Arena as an unranked team, a 15-point loss to Notre Dame the previous week their only game to that point.

U of L nearly pulled off the upset.

And Payne played an interesting role. He finished with 10 points and five rebounds, but his day in Lexington was far more eventful than that stat line.

During the first half, Louisville called a timeout and broke the huddle with six players. Felton Spencer had been set to check into the game for Payne before the stoppage in play. Nobody told Payne, so both players were on the court — with four teammates — when the game resumed. The Cards were immediately called for a technical, and the Cats got a free throw and the ball. Ed Davender made the freebie and then hit a three-pointer on the ensuing possession to give UK a 27-19 lead.

“Felton didn’t say anything to Kenny,” U of L assistant Jerry Jones said after the game. “And the coaches were so busy drawing up plays, we forgot to tell Kenny he was out. That was the coaches’ fault.”

Payne made a three-pointer in the final seconds of the first half to steady a reeling Cardinals’ team that had fallen behind by double digits. Louisville worked its way back into the game after halftime, and Payne hit another three late in the second half to put the Cards ahead, 72-70.

The teams traded the lead from there, and the game was decided when Cedric Jenkins tipped in an offensive rebound — for his only two points of the game — right before the buzzer to give Kentucky a 76-75 victory.

The rivals nearly met again in the NCAA Tournament that season.

Louisville made it to the Sweet 16 as the 5 seed in the Southeast Regional, but the Cards lost to top-seeded Oklahoma in that round. Kentucky was the 2 seed in the same region, but the Cats were upset by Villanova in their Sweet 16 game.

Payne averaged 10.7 points and 4.7 rebounds in 29.6 minutes per game as a junior.

A breakthrough in Louisville

The 1988-89 season was Payne’s final run in college and one of the worst seasons in modern Kentucky basketball history.

The Cats ended up with a 13-19 record, and Sutton resigned under pressure amid allegations of NCAA violations that would ultimately lead to probation for the UK basketball program.

Before all of that, the Cats and the Cards met again in Freedom Hall.

UK was 6-6 going into the rivalry game, with losses to Bowling Green and Northwestern State. Louisville was the No. 14 team in the country.

The end result was inevitable: Cards 97, Cats 75.

Payne finished with 16 points — his high mark in four meetings with Kentucky — and five rebounds in a team-high 33 minutes. U of L’s campaign — and Payne’s college career — would ultimately end with another Sweet 16 loss, this time to Illinois, and the senior forward averaged 14.5 points and 5.7 rebounds in 29.9 minutes per game that season before being selected with the No. 19 overall pick in the 1989 NBA Draft.

As Sutton’s replacement, Kentucky hired Rick Pitino, who would go on to coach both teams in the rivalry.

And Payne’s final game against the Wildcats ended with his only victory. It was a lopsided one in Louisville’s favor, though the margin wasn’t as wide as UK’s win in Freedom Hall two years earlier. After three losses to the Cats, the score didn’t matter. Only the final outcome.

“I’m just happy to get the victory,” Payne said. “I’m not really concerned about the margin. It was a good win.”

Saturday

Louisville at No. 19 Kentucky

When: Noon

TV: CBS-27

Radio: WBUL-FM 98.1

Records: Louisville 2-11, Kentucky 8-3

Series: Kentucky leads 37-17

Last meeting: Louisville won 62-59 on Dec. 26, 2020, at Louisville

This story was originally published December 30, 2022 at 7:00 AM.

Ben Roberts

Lexington Herald-Leader

859-429-2848

Ben Roberts is the University of Kentucky men’s basketball beat writer for the Lexington Herald-Leader. He has previously specialized in UK basketball recruiting coverage and created and maintained the Next Cats blog. He is a Franklin County native and first joined the Herald-Leader in 2006. Support my work with a digital subscription