It seems like Bret is executing a plan more so than Underwood is. There are also almost no significant transfers so player retention is high whereas in bball it’s transfers all the time. It just feels more stable than bball feels. Also, probably worth mentioning our expectations for football in general are significantly lower than basketball.
On the one hand, I think it's different for how Bret wants to build the football program and how any college basketball coach needs to build his roster in this day and age. We are never going to have a top half of the Big Ten recruiting class under Bret. I doubt we are getting any 5 stars. But that's ok. Where we want Illinois football to be, 7-9 wins a year and starting to win bowl games, you don't need that type of talent. Bret knows how to find a couple of 4 stars and some solid 3 stars and build them up into something impressive. Bret hasn't let us down yet there, so we feel pretty good about how things are going.
As for BU, I understand he is also not a 5 star or bust kind of coach. But to actually compete where we want to be competing (conference titles and second weekend in the tournament) you have to basically have a top half of the conference player at every starting position. Diamonds in the rough come along and can contribute significantly, but you can't really build a contending lineup entirely out of them. I feel like that is where we were in the JFG era. So a missed recruitment or a bad judgment call on where to put one's eggs is that much more consequential in basketball than it is in football.
Maybe BU deserves just as much trust, if not more, than we have with Bret. The difference just seems to be one guy appears to be executing his plan, and the other guy appears to have to keep moving on to the following Plan B, C, D, etc.