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Louisville basketball recruiting class: Kenny Payne has Cards in top 5 – Courier Journal
Two years doesn’t seem like that long to be out of the college game.
But in the time University of Louisville coach Kenny Payne served as an assistant coach on the New York Knicks staff, the most seismic changes in NCAA basketball since the late 1980s greatly altered how rosters are constructed.
The transfer portal coupled with name, image and likeness (NIL) created an atmosphere so volatile, it played a hand in the retirement decisions of Hall of Fame coaches Roy Williams at North Carolina and Jay Wright at Villanova.
This is the landscape Payne jumped back into when he was hired last year. And it’s largely the reason why the Cardinals didn’t get a talent boost to their roster to avoid their worst season since going 2-14 in 1940-41. That won’t be the case for the coming season. Payne’s re-acclimation to recruiting is over.
The Cards currently have the fifth-ranked recruiting class, according to the 247 Sports composite rankings, even without adding McDonald’s All-America forward Mackenzie Mgbako. The former Duke signee, who is widely recognized as a top 10 prospect in the class, clipped the Cards from his list of final four schools days before committing to Indiana on Friday.
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There’s still a chance the Cards could add another player to their highest-ranked class since also being No. 5 in 2014. The final players entered the transfer portal as the window for basketball closed Thursday night, including a few intriguing names like Creighton’s Arthur Kaluma. The scramble to find a new school will continue from now until classes start in the fall.
Even if U of L doesn’t sign another player, this recruiting cycle is more indicative of what it can expect under Payne. Every class won’t be ranked in the top five, but the Cards will be back to winning more of their key recruiting battles. Now, they just need it to translate to winning on the court.
The last time college basketball faced such a change as it has over the last two years was when Proposition 42 caused the late, great Georgetown coach John Thompson to boycott a game in protest in 1989. That eligibility rule denied scholarships to players who did not have either a 2.0 grade point average or score 700 on the SAT.
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Many coaches will say the transfer portal and NIL has caused more instability than Prop 42 ever did.
The portal made it unnecessary to need a stellar class of high school recruits. And in doing so, it clearly made fanbases way more impatient too, because of how fast rosters could be re-tooled with the right transfers.
NIL made it to where financial packages beat old-fashioned relationships for recruits. Kentucky’s stellar point guard recruit Robert Dillingham initially committed to N.C. State. NIL is believed to be a part of why the Wolfpack couldn’t keep him because its collective could not come up with enough capital.
Payne understands how to navigate that landscape now.
U of L missed out on most of the transfers it targeted last year after Payne’s hiring. Tyrese Hunter chose Texas. Malachi Smith went to Gonzaga. Sean McNeil picked Ohio State. Isiaih Mosley ended up at Missouri. Emoni Bates stayed home and picked Eastern Michigan.
Payne also missed on his first big high school recruit, D.J. Wagner. The speculation through much of last summer was that U of L was tantalizingly close to getting Wagner to commit, but the top-five recruit chose UK.
Payne won a lot of those battles this recruiting cycle, beating the likes of North Carolina, Memphis and Alabama for Trentyn Flowers; Kansas and Florida State for 7-foot-1 center Dennis Evans. He beat out Tennessee and Maryland in the portal for Illinois transfer Skyy Clark.
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It’s also not a coincidence U of L secured its best class in nearly a decade after the cloud of potential NCAA sanctions by the Independent Accountability Resolution Process (IARP) was finally lifted.
Most of the other schools with pending cases from the IARP also took major recruiting hits: Arizona’s class of 2021 was ranked 84 and the class of ‘22 was only No. 41. Memphis didn’t even sign any freshman last year — its class was all transfers. U of L avoided having a big drop off as its previous two classes were 17th and eighth, respectfully. But they Cards had some big whiffs over the past decade too. The 2016 class was ranked 94th; they didn’t sign anyone in 2018 and as the pandemic began in 2020, they were 27th.
Payne’s first full recruiting cycle reveals an insight into how he wants to build a team. Payne molded the roster much in the same way Dan Hurley built Connecticut’s national championship team last season.
The Huskies eschewed a traditional point guard and went with a big lineup where 6-5 Tristen Newton and 6-6 Andre Jackson, who both averaged 4.6 assists per game, split time as the lead guard in their halfcourt sets.
The Cards have similarly assembled a cache of big guards and a bunch of wings with length. They can potentially roll out lineups that mimic NBA rotations where the 6-3 Clark is the shortest player. He and 6-7 junior college transfer Koron Davis will spend time at point guard.
They’ll be surrounded by guard/forwards including 6-5 Mike James, USC transfer 6-7 Tre White, 6-8 senior J.J. Traynor, 6-8 Flowers, and 6-6 Kaleb Glenn, a former Male High School standout.
And the backcourt should be solid with Brandon Huntley-Hatfield’s return along with sophomore Emmanuel Okorafor and Evans.
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Defensively, the team has potential to be a headache for opponents with an ability to switch everything on picks.
Now the question remains, will they have enough playmaking in the backcourt and 3-point shooting from the perimeter to make it all work?
It may seem like Payne switched everything on his roster too, with only five players returning from last season. This is less about overhauling personnel as it is expectations.
U of L’s recruiting class is a reminder that recruiting is one of Payne’s coaching strengths. Now with this talent upgrade, he’ll be charged with making everyone forget the stench of last year’s 4-28 season.
Reach sports columnist C.L. Brown at clbrown1@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter at @CLBrownHoops.