Who was he going to play in front of? Plummer? Trent? Damonte? Grandison? Curbelo? I don't think anyone would say yes.
Then you look at his fellow Fr, he didn't perform nearly as well as RJ or Goode. Just looking at 3 pt shooting, RJ shot 60%, Goode 37%, Podz 23%.
The answer is simple: personal improvement + massive increase in opportunity = success
If he were still here, we probably wouldn't have one of Mayer or Shannon. Would an improved Podz be worth the loss of one of our top 2 scorers? Would Podz be blocking shots like Mayer? If Underwood had a crystal ball I could see the answer being yes. Podz scoring 10 ppg could be better for the program than Mayer scoring 12 ppg since Podz would be here the following year. He probably would have taken a lot of Goode's and RJ's time given RJ's struggles and Goode's injury. But I don't think Underwood has a crystal ball. No way he could have known Goode would get hurt, RJ would struggle, and Podz would explode. He saw a redundant piece to RJ and Goode, who played much better as Fr and the opportunity to get guys that would lead the team in scoring. It was the right move.
The right move doesn't always work out. That's just called life.
Rarely, but sometimes practice just doesn't correlate to real action. Podz obviously wouldn't bring putting up the same numbers, but to quote Underwood again, "it's nice to see kids get rewarded for the hard work they put in." (Even if it is at another school.)
