Louisville Basketball: 10 candidates to replace Chris Mack as head coach

Kenny Payne

There’s clearly a certain criteria for any head coaching search, and all but one of the names on this list have something in common: experience and success as a head coach. That doesn’t mean that Louisville should only hire someone with power conference or head coaching experience in general, because there’s a very familiar name who could do some impressive things there.

Payne played under Denny Crum at Louisville back in the late 80’s before heading off to the NBA. He got back into the college game as an assistant at Oregon. He recently spent a decade on John Calipari’s staff at Kentucky and has certainly gotten plenty of familiarity in recruiting and game management on that staff. Payne has spent the last two seasons on Tom Thibodeau’s bench with the New York Knicks.

Right now, Payne looks like an appetizing choice to eventually succeed Calipari at Kentucky, which certainly makes him even more appetizing to these Cardinals. Bringing back a former player with plenty of relevant experience seems like a home run, though that lack of head coaching experience may be a red flag. We’ve seen how NBA guys like Penny Hardaway and Jerry Stackhouse have done without that experience, but this is different. That decade under Calipari shaped Payne into a potential gold mine of a head coach.