Kenny Payne’s plan is that one day this is commonplace.

The Louisville basketball coach dreams of — and says he’s working toward — a future that looks a lot like the Cardinals’ past, one where the program is again among the most successful and respected in the sport.

For now, he’ll take the 68-58 win his Cards got Wednesday night against Georgia Tech.

Yes, it was ugly. The Yellow Jackets shot 29.5% from the floor. The Cardinals (3-19, 1-10 ACC) committed 15 turnovers.

No, it wasn’t against a quality opponent. Georgia Tech’s loss was its eighth straight.

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The game between the bottom two teams in the ACC standings was as advertised, full of funky bounces and ill-advised misfires and weird turnovers. The ball stalled. Layups rolled off the rim. Bad decisions abounded.

But Payne — a national champion as a player at Louisville and again as an assistant coach at Kentucky — didn’t take the moment for granted. After this season, how could he?

“I can tell you that I've been blessed to be around a bunch of winning,” Payne said. “And I've always known this: Winning is very fragile.”

He’s experienced so little of it this season that he has to stop and savor. So do his players.

And so they celebrated Wednesday night. The Cards soaked up cheers from a KFC Yum! Center crowd announced at 11,416 but with enthusiasm enough for twice that.

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Forwards Jae’Lyn Withers (19 points, 13 rebounds), Kamari Lands (11 points) and JJ Traynor (10 points) bounded into the postgame news conference with wide smiles and energy that suggested they could play a doubleheader.

And the Cards presented Payne with a game ball in the locker room to commemorate his first conference win — a plan engineered by point guard El Ellis that lacked the postgame soaking Payne got from water bottles after his first career win, over Western Kentucky in December.

“They tried,” Payne said of the drenching. “I told ‘em I’ll swing on ‘em.”

That was the postgame mood after Louisville snapped a stretch of 10 straight games — and 46 days — without a win.

Light. Fun.

“Even though they've been struggling as well, we're really excited about the win,” Traynor said. “No matter if it's Georgia Tech or if it's Duke, we'll take it."

It didn’t matter that the game was no thing of beauty, that the Yellow Jackets (8-14, 1-11) were coming off an 86-43 loss Saturday at Duke.

The Cards still had to earn it.

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The game was tied at 45 with 9:26 to play, and Louisville outscored the Yellow Jackets 23-13 the rest of the way.

And when the Jackets cut the lead to four in the final minute, Lands bailed out the Cards with a leaning 3-pointer that beat the shot-clock buzzer and put his team in front 65-58 with 43 seconds to play.

A prayer, you might say.

“A confidence shot,” Lands called it from the postgame dais, as Withers laughed in disbelief.

For one night, at least, there was no dampening the mood.

Payne wanted his players to enjoy it.

With all that’s gone wrong, they’ve earned that right.

Payne understands the fragility of wining. He knows wins can be hard to come by, that they should be appreciated.

But he wanted the Cards to imagine a world where a win like Wednesday’s — and better ones, too, against bigger-name opponents — are the norm. A world where Louisville expects to win on a basketball court the way Alabama and Georgia do on a football field.

Payne believes Louisville will get there, believes the program will “earn the respect of every team that walks through these doors and every team that we play against.”

He just doesn’t know when.

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“I'm not gonna say next year,” Payne said. “I'm gonna tell you that I'm building something in my mind that is gonna be able to have sustained success. Next year will be better. I don't know how it could be worse. In the future, I can just tell you this, that I know now and I've always known how to put a team together that will make others want to come and be a part of it.”

Louisville might not win another game this season.

College basketball analytics site KenPom.com — which predicted a Georgia Tech win Wednesday — projects the Cards to lose out, with a 35% chance against Florida State on Saturday its best statistical shot at another victory.

But Payne, at least, is positive that the day is coming when the program will make wins routine again.

“These fans over the years since the 70s and 80s, 90s even 2000s, they've been blessed to have great teams, and for whatever reason they got derailed,” Payne said. “And I pray to God every day that we can get this back on track, and I know that we will. I know God didn't take me through this journey to come back here and lose every game.”

Reach Louisville men’s basketball reporter Brett Dawson at mdawson@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter at @BDawsonWrites.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville basketball vs Georgia Tech: Cardinals get first ACC win