I think Underwood can recruit pretty well and put together successful rosters, so from like "GM" standpoint, he's a good program builder. And if we were still in the days where kids were "trapped" and couldn't transfer without sitting that'd lead to a lot of overall success, but yeah as an in-game type of coach, he's obviously not rated super highly. Like yeah, three pointers are good, analytics and all. Yet this team was garbage at them, but we never seemed to get it coached out to STOP. SHOOTING. THREES. A better coach can make those adjustments mid-season, a guy like Underwood just hopes that they'll start making them and the problem will magically fix itself.
The big issue though is that now kids can transfer out without being punished for it. Alan Griffin, Adam Miller, Andre Curbelo, Brandin Podziemski, Skyy Clark, now looking like Dain Dainja and Jayden Epps. These aren't guys that had no future, we're just bleeding out recruited talent left and right. Heck, Kofi Cockburn was an All-American and even he from some reason was considering jumping ship by going in the Portal rather than play for a Coach that he knew could implement a system around him already, and then eventually did to go play for a garbage team in the Japanese B League (follow your dreams..) Underwood can get kids here, but he can't keep them. If you can't retain talent, and you can't outscheme the opposition, then what do we have here? We had 2 first team All Americans and got a couple of good seasons that ultimately resulted in two Round of 32s out of it. Now we're going to slip further and further unless we can stop all the player turnover.
Underwood rebuilt the program and for that I'm grateful. He was a step up from Groce, but it does look increasingly more likely, and as much as I hate to admit it, that the Illini are going to have to make a move if they're going to get back to being the program they want to be.