You are correct, they are different. You can have a good poker strategy, take the right line in a hand given your position, board texture and someone sucks out on the river on you - yes, that is poor results with good performance due to bad luck. But, if you played 32, two hour sessions over the course of a season, you would have to have a lot of blind spots to think you are a great poker player if you had poor results and you were losing in the same ways a lot of the time. At some point results have to show.
My criticism of BU's performance can be tied to late game strategies, his perception going into the season that we were "good with what we have" and "you guys are a lot more concerned with size than I am" then to see the team get hammered on the boards with an inability to defend the paint. That wasn't bad luck, that was a coach in over his head not knowing what it takes to compete in the big ten. Maybe his strategies and recruiting approach worked at SF Austin, but they aren't working in the Big Ten. Hopefully he'll adjust, good coaches do - but the jury is still out. Whitman is obviously not going to fire him, given his contract and admission of a hiring mistake. But it would be foolish to think Whitman is not questioning whether he made the right hire or not at this point.