Louisville HC Kenny Payne Postgame Presser vs. Chattanooga (11/10/23)
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00:00 Um,
00:00 first of all, gotta give them credit.
00:08 That's a very good basketball team that walked in here. They walked in, not
00:14 afraid of us. They walked in and executed their game plan.
00:18 Thought they would be aggressors.
00:21 Felt like
00:25 we were behind action a lot of times during the game. And, uh, they attacked
00:32 us. Thought that, you know, they made a bunch of threes and a guard play was
00:37 energetic and decisive in the way they played. And the big guys also, um, they
00:43 played with a tenacity that we didn't match right seat.
00:48 And that falls on not just the players, the coaches as well as well as me. And
00:55 we take accountability for that. I take accountability for that. I tried to
01:00 tell him that we were playing a team that
01:02 is a very good team that has veteran players back.
01:06 That can be,
01:09 and wish they came in here and did, which I knew it would be a hard fall
01:17 game. I thought that my guys will come in and play with more energy. But for
01:23 whatever reason, they didn't. And we gotta get better questions.
01:28 Yeah, after you guys gave up, I think it was,
01:38 I think it was above it.
01:41 In the first, how do you go about, you know, just giving up even more tonight?
01:49 And just did you see strides in practice this weekend? What are the things that
01:52 went wrong? I did see strides this week, but I also saw
01:57 guys that didn't really understand the urgency of attention to detail.
02:03 And we challenged them to to make sure they understood that this team can
02:09 really shoot the ball and that when we rotate out of traps or we rotate
02:14 whenever somebody penetrates that we better know who the shooters are and we
02:18 better get to him early with a high hand.
02:21 And we didn't tonight. I thought the other guard
02:25 number 12 played a poised under control game.
02:31 And he hurt us.
02:33 He looked like one of the best players we played against. He was boys. He was
02:40 precise. He was confident and we looked unsure.
02:44 Their guard play was really good. I think one had
02:50 22 and I won 25. That's a lot of points.
02:53 Kenny, what was that locker room like? And how do you I mean, I know it's early
02:59 at your second game, but how do you keep it from spiraling? It's a different
03:03 group of guys to the head last year. So how do you keep it from turning into
03:06 last year? Um, great question. I think we talked about that in the locker room.
03:11 To be honest with you, one of the things is I need the leaders to leave.
03:18 And I need the young guys to learn. So I have a bunch of players that have
03:24 been in college basketball before. We have seen this. Who knows how hard it
03:28 is that the jersey name on the jersey doesn't matter. It can be a division
03:35 two. It could be a high major. It could be a great program. It doesn't matter
03:40 if you don't play hard and you don't control it and you don't play with
03:44 energy and you don't focus on the little things you're gonna be in for a
03:49 hard night. And I say it to the guys all the time. You can beat anybody or you
03:54 can get beat by anybody
03:56 you can
04:01 going off that
04:04 I'm going off that. What was the beard in that? I'm like at halftime because
04:10 you know you guys were down in Game one. But you know, people talked about
04:14 the other being a speech from Peyton Seba and just, you know, you know how
04:19 they came out with fire there in the second half. What was the difference
04:23 tonight? I just thought that, you know, we address whatever we were doing. It
04:29 wasn't good enough. We wasn't sharing the ball enough. Wasn't getting enough
04:32 assist. Um, we didn't make layups. How many easy shots did we miss? How many
04:39 open shots did we miss? How many times did they collapse and we refused to
04:43 pass the ball to each other?
04:45 You know, good offensive teams are gonna be good passing teams. I knew coming
04:51 off the game that we just played that they allowed us and they took the
04:56 threes away from the corners and they allowed us to get downhill. Best best
05:00 part of the game is getting downhill. The next part of the game is reading
05:04 what happens when they collapse. Well, tonight this team collapsed and we kept
05:09 trying to shoot the ball instead of kicking it to an open man and getting
05:13 ball movement. Um, when you do that, there's a rhythm that's lost. So
05:18 there's a disconnect when that happens. And we had to do a better job of that
05:23 tonight. In order to beat this team, we talked about it. We game plan for it.
05:28 We game plan for how they score, how they shoot threes. And we gave them
05:34 rhythm. We gave them build muscles as they say. And, you know, they came in
05:39 here and burned us.
05:40 I question.
05:42 And some of this is new to these guys. But I question if they understand the
05:48 pride to be in your home building and fight to get a win. I question that.
05:54 I question if my leaders can lead young players talking through tough times,
06:01 not make excuses in front of them so that they think it's okay.
06:06 It's not acceptable.
06:09 Kenny, some of that is the same stuff you talked about last year. What can
06:16 you do differently with this group of guys to change that?
06:19 We have better players.
06:23 So some of it starts with that. But also I need leadership on the floor. My
06:31 James is leader. Scott Clark is the leader. Trey is the leader. JJ has been
06:37 here through some bad times, and he's the leader. He's seen, you know, some
06:42 hard times here.
06:43 I need them to be more vocal. I need them to be more accountable. I need
06:50 them to to make it a player driven team instead of coach driven team.
06:58 I want to win. And the fact that I want to win, I want to fight when we lose.
07:02 And I have to come and face you guys and and like I'm okay with it. But I'm
07:09 really not okay with it. I need players to want to win as bad as I don't. And
07:15 I'm not trying to win for me. This isn't about me. This is about them. This is
07:19 about this school. This is about this community. This is this is special to
07:25 me. And when it's not going the way that it should go, it bothers me. And I
07:30 need the players to feel that
07:31 can't. Do you see evidence that you have those kind of players or definitely we
07:38 have those kind of players. But it's, you know, I said it on the radio show
07:43 this morning when the lights come on and people were in there,
07:45 things change. The great players, the great teams are able to get locked in
07:52 and get lost within the game and not worry about lights and people and they
07:57 play it for the right reasons. Yes, the energy of the fans will ignite you. But
08:01 at the end of the day, you're locked into playing winning basketball and not
08:05 trying to do it all by yourself.
08:07 Any questions for coach?
08:11 Let me have one more. All of a sudden, you know, there at the end, the last
08:17 five or six minutes, it's like they flipped the switch and started playing
08:22 their money. What do you think they just realized how far they had to come
08:27 back? I wish I had the answer to that. I would like for them to play the game
08:32 and start the game like that.
08:33 You know, it's amazing. We're down 20 and all of a sudden the ball starts
08:39 going in the hole. I need us to not make shots. Then I need you to make shots
08:45 when it's tight score when it's a two point game. When it's a three point
08:48 game, I need you to fight to get stops. Um, that team shot what in the second
08:54 half? 57%.
08:56 I mean, they're a good team, but 57% makes it feel like they got everything
09:03 they wanted and within rhythm.
09:04 All right. Thank you.
09:07 (slurping)