David Padgett returns to the KFC Yum Center

For the first time since serving as Louisville’s interim head coach during the 2017-18 season, David Padgett was back in the KFC Yum Center on Sunday to watch the Cards take on Akron.

Padgett was shown on the big screen during the first half, a move which elicited some of the game’s loudest cheers.

“It’s different sitting in the stands drinking a beer,” Padgett told the Courier Journal’s Hayes Gardner. “There’s no question about that. But it’s good. It’s the University of Louisville. There’s no better place in the country.”

It would have been easy for Padgett — who is spending this season as a volunteer coach at North Oldham Middle School — to leave U of L with a bitter taste in his mouth, or to at least feel not as attached to Cardinal basketball as he once did. Instead, he’s still supporting the program as much as he ever has and has formed a solid relationship with the man now guiding the ship.

We should have expected nothing less from the 2008 Card Chronicle Person of the Year.