Sports
Louisville-Simmons channel, time, schedule, streaming info: exhibition – Courier Journal
Winning an exhibition game, typically, means very little.
But the Louisville men’s basketball team did not have a typical 2022-23 season.
U of L’s 57-47 loss to Lenoir-Rhyne on Oct. 30, 2022, did not count as one of its 28 in Year 1 of the Kenny Payne era. It did, however, snap a streak of 39 straight exhibition victories and served as a sign of things to come in what went down as the worst season in modern program history.
Is Payne feeling any added pressure to (unofficially) start the 2023-24 campaign with a W when his new-look Cardinals host Simmons College on Wednesday night at the KFC Yum! Center? No.
He said winning is a byproduct of the intangibles he’s instilling in his eight newcomers and four scholarship returners.
“I probably (will) not talk about winning the game,” Payne told reporters Tuesday. “I’m going to talk about being fierce. I’m going to talk about being desperate. I’m going to talk about being the aggressor.”
“The process will take care of the win. I need them to embrace that.”
Louisville vs. Simmons College:Projecting who Kenny Payne starts in the Cards’ exhibition vs. the Falcons
There will be plenty to monitor during Louisville’s exhibition against Simmons, a Division II program coached by a captain of the Cards’ 1980 national championship team, U of L Athletics Hall of Fame member Tony Branch.
The Falcons finished last season 14-13 and ranked fourth in the National Christian College Athletic Association’s Coaches Poll.
Payne told reporters Tuesday he had not yet decided on a starting lineup. Rather, he’s continued mixing up the roster in practice to “find out who’s going to fight.”
“It’s more important how you finish a game than how you start,” he said. “I want there to be competition everywhere.”
When asked what they’d most like to get out of the exhibition, Mike James and JJ Traynor agreed on “confidence.”
“(We) definitely want to become closer as a team, learn more about each other,” said James, a redshirt sophomore guard/forward. “Some lineups haven’t been together on the court yet, so just playing against somebody else will be good for us before we (play) our first actual game.
“I just want to come out and get everybody’s confidence up,” he added. “We should win these two (exhibition) games by a good amount, so I just want to get everybody’s confidence up on the offensive end and defensive end, knowing what they’re doing and when they’re supposed to do it.”
Here’s what you need to know to follow along from home:
U of L and Simmons College are scheduled to tip off at 7 p.m. Wednesday inside the KFC Yum! Center.
The exhibition between the Cards and the Falcons will not air on a traditional TV channel.
Kent Taylor (play-by-play) and Jody Demling (analyst) will call the game on ACC Network Extra, which is available exclusively via livestream.
If your cable or live TV streaming package includes ACC Network, you already have access to ACC Network Extra. You can access it via ESPN.com/watch or the ESPN app after logging in with your cable or live TV streaming service credentials.
If you don’t have cable, you can get ACC Network — and therefore ACC Network Extra — through streaming services such as fuboTV (FREE TRIAL) and YouTube TV (FREE TRIAL).
Paul Rogers (play-by-play) and Mark Lieberman (analyst) will have the call on the Cardinal Sports Network (WLCL 93.9-FM and WGTK 970-AM in Louisville).
You can also listen online via GoCards.com.
C.L. Brown:U of L basketball will be much different in Year 2 under Kenny Payne. But how good will the Cards be?
Reach Louisville men’s basketball reporter Brooks Holton at bholton@gannett.com and follow him on X at @brooksHolton.
