Groce inherited a tournament team and he was successful with the team he inherited. One brutal call from being in the Sweet 16. It was a team with size, talent and a super stud scorer. After that, I give him credit for swinging for the fences with high profile recruits, but when he missed....the issues started. Bad class balance, average talent and here we are.
Underwood is inheriting a mess and is completely reliant on an assistant to make 2017-2018 salvageable. If that class doesn't come through....he has 75% of the previous year's production gone, no senior leadership, no size, no depth...next year will be a train wreck and will be reliant on a major coup for 2018.
Two totally different scenarios.
You can't just look at the results of Groce's first year and say that he had a lot to work with. When Weber got fired, this was a team that had gone 6-12 in conference and was 95% likely to lose their best player in Meyers. People on all Illini boards were calling the program and the team a dumpster fire. Heck, people today still refer to the end of 2012 as a dumpster fire.
It's REALLY HARD to disentangle talent with coaching. BP had a couple really great games as a senior, but was that because he always had that in him, or because Groce's coaching got him there? Did Kaminski always have a ton of talent, or was it Bo Ryan who got him there? (I lean toward talent for BP and coaching for FK, but smarter people than me can disagree)
On paper, including the incoming Freshman class, we'll have 3 RSCI top 50 and 5 RSCI top 100 players on the roster. That's probably as loaded as any team between 4-10 in the B1G. We'll get some growing pains, but there's no reason why we have to expect worse than the 8-10 this year, WITH GOOD COACHING. Groce said at his last press conference that he thinks he left this place better than where he found it. I don't necessarily agree with that, but it's probably accurate purely on a roster construction basis.