Louisville falls to Lenoir-Rhyne 57-47 in first exhibition game

The Kenny Payne era is off to a horrendous start in Louisville. Truly couldn’t get any worse, really.

Hosting Lenoir-Rhyne — a Division II school out of Hickory, North Carolina — in their first exhibition game of the year, the Cardinals fell by a final score of 57-47. A double-digit home loss in a buy game.

The numbers are about as wacky as you’d imagine. Jae’Lyn Withers led the Cardinals with 20 points on 5-9 shooting and 4-7 from three to go with 10 rebounds, one block, one steal and three turnovers. He was the only player to finish in double figures. From there, Mike James added eight points, followed by Brandon Huntley-Hatfield with five and Sydney Curry with four.

No other player scored over one basket.

As a team, the Cardinals shot just 29.2% from the field (14-48) and 31.6% from three (6-19) while turning the ball over 16 times. Meanwhile, the Bears hit 35.7% of their shots (20-56) and 25% of their 3-point attempts (7-28) — a poor shooting night, but somehow better than the Cards.

To put things in perspective, even Zan Payne — yes, that Zan Payne — played five minutes and took two shots in a loss. Truly unbelievable.

Louisville is set to take on Chaminade in its second exhibition matchup of the year on Thursday, Nov. 3 at 7 p.m. ET. Maybe they’ll catch the *checks notes* Silverswords on a bad night.

Gonna be a long year for the Cards.