Agree he is overpaid.
I think he is pretty much just a guy.
Not bad, not good. Kind of an old school prick.
Some kids clearly do not like it.
Others do.
Did great job with the COVID year team.
Can't argue with his success overall in getting Illinois back in the mix, but the NCAA tourney prep and game planning has been subpar and it is a theme in his career.
It's interesting you say that. I don't totally disagree that poor tournament prep has been a theme here - but I think there's maybe some recency and fandom biases at play here too. He's -really- blown it in the tournament once, halfway blown it in the tournament .. twice, I'll say? - the last three seasons.
Before that he'd had quite a bit of relative tournament success - won games at SFA as a 12-seed and a 14-seed. He obviously prepped those teams well enough to pull off upsets.
I think there could be something to the notion that he's better at winning with an underdog type team - some guys are like that I think. Weber was kind of that way, he was good beating more talented and athletic teams with discipline and skill guys, but struggled to 'step up' when he had to recruit and win with the more talented, athletic types. He also was obviously just a dweeb which doesn't necessarily resonate with the McDonald's All American, but might with some underdog type kids.
I think it's possible Underwood is that. I also think it's possible he'll struggle to get true 'program buy in' in the portal era - I think he's recruited pretty well in the portal, Plummer was decent, Shannon is good. But recruiting well for one or two year guys is different than building a program, culture, etc. I think he got that from the Ayo/Kofi group but that group was also kind of an underdog story to some degree - we had been mediocre for so long. I don't think we know for sure whether either of those things are true yet.
One thing that sucks is that by pushing back on some of the particularly silly Underwood hate here, I'm painted as someone who just loves him and would do anything to defend him. I'm not that, at all. I want Illinois basketball to be nationally competitive, a consistent top college basketball program, with a chance to win a national title. That's my only dog in the fight, period. I just think some of you here have already "decided" on Underwood, and I think frankly the way you paint him simply doesn't match the results so far. A fan from another fanbase would probably look at our last 10 years and think some of the shit that gets said here is absolutely fucking nuts.
If a year from now Underwood just totally failed, we had a year worse than last year, Truth's right - and we fire him? I'll be totally fine with that. If we make the second round and lose to a tough team again and we fire him, that's different IMO. The only way to win in the tournament is to be in the tournament. There are any number of examples of great coaches who failed a few times in the tournament before they succeeded - and also examples of coaches who had some initial success and then fizzled off. I think it's too early to know on Underwood, but I think our fanbase consistently underestimates the likelihood of doing what Underwood has done here so far - and overestimates the likelihood that we'd be able to get someone that's clearly better.
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by murphstahoe 2026 Pale Hoes by ThePAMan
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