Louisville won a basketball game on Sunday. Won it impressively, blowing out Pepperdine 85-63. In doing so, the Cardinals surpassed their win total from all of last season.

And it’s still mid-December.

Cause for celebration, right?

Absolutely.

Reason to be optimistic?

As the great Lee Corso would say, not so fast my friend.

While the lopsided victory was satisfying and helped ease some of the wounds that have afflicted the once-proud program over the past 2 seasons, it was little more than a Band-aid placed over a severed limb.

And while it has helped coach Kenny Payne avoid the indignity of a midseason firing, a fate widely reported to be imminent, it’s likely only a temporary reprieve.

Or at least it should be.

The sooner the Cardinals decide to cut their losses by letting Payne go, the better off they’ll be and the sooner they can start getting serious about digging out of the hole they’ve dug for themselves.

According to numerous published reports, the process may already have begun with a series of meetings between athletic director Josh Heird and several players last week to discuss Payne’s future. CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander has indicated that Heird is prepared to make a decision about this school’s coaching situation before the end of the season.

To be fair to Payne, the mess isn’t entirely his fault.

Its seeds were planted during the Stripper-gate scandal that marred the tenure of Rick Pitino and helped bring a national championship banner down from the rafters of the Yum! Center.

Things only got worse under Pitino’s replacement Chris Mack, who instead of cleaning up the program added to its troubles by becoming embroiled in a pay-for-play scandal that included extortion charges against assistant Dino Gaudio and led to his firing.

The 1-2 punch created a desperate situation that called for someone, anyone to step in and restore some badly needed respectability to the program.

Who better to do that than a beloved alumnus?

It’s an approach that has worked out well for Louisville’s football program, with Jeff Brohm leading the Cardinals to the ACC Championship Game in his first season back at his alma mater. Not so much in basketball.

A local hero who scored 1,000 career points and helped the Cardinals win a national championship in 1986, Payne certainly had the credentials when he was chosen to lead Louisville back to prominence prior to last season. He served apprenticeships as an assistant under Hall of Famer John Calipari at Kentucky and 2-time NBA Coach of the Year Tom Thibodeau with the New York Knicks.

But he had no head coaching experience.

As it turns out, it was a mistake to entrust such a massive rebuilding project to a coach needing on-the-job training. It didn’t take long for it to become painfully obvious that Payne was in way over his head.

He’s become Louisville’s Matt Doherty.

His first team was poorly constructed and struggled from the outset, losing to Bellarmine in its season-opener. Its 4-28 record (2-18 ACC) wasn’t just the worst in school history. The Cardinals were so bad, finishing 314th out of 363 Division I teams in the NCAA’s NET rankings, that they helped bring down the entire ACC.

The season was such a disaster that Payne might already have been fired had he not been such a popular legacy. Whatever goodwill that remained has since expired.

Even after Sunday’s victory, the Cardinals are only 5-6 with a rivalry game against powerful Kentucky coming up Thursday, followed by the meat of the ACC schedule.

And the results aren’t the only reason it’s time to part ways with Payne.

His handling of a controversy involving now-former player Koron Davis last week called attention to the leadership void that plagues the program as it continues to redefine the depths of rock bottom.

Wednesday afternoon, Louisville issued a statement indicating that Davis, a junior college transfer who hadn’t appeared in a game during his first season with the Cardinals, had entered the NCAA transfer portal.

Turns out, he didn’t.

Davis responded with a social media post denying that he’d asked for a transfer, adding that “the fact an official statement giving false information is disheartening and sad.”

Adding to an already bad situation, the now-former player showed up for that night’s game against Arkansas State. He watched from the stands as the Cardinals suffered a 12-point loss to the 3-7 Red Wolves.

Louisville later issued a release saying that Davis had, in fact, been dismissed from the team. Presumably, Payne didn’t originally come out and say as much because he was trying to protect the player from embarrassment.

Doing so only served to make a bad situation worse. It’s a downward trajectory similar to the one on which Louisville, once among the nation’s elite, is currently stuck.

The first step toward reversing it is issuing another statement. One that says it’s Payne’s turn to be dismissed from the program. Sunday’s win notwithstanding, the Cardinals are in desperate need of yet another fresh start.

The sooner it happens, the better off they’ll be.