Illinois Hires Brad Underwood

[dpwhite]

Away from Oklahoma State, per Twitter reports.

Holy moly.

 

[dpwhite]

http://collegebasketball.nbcsports....wood-will-be-the-next-head-coach-at-illinois/

 

[Mr. Magoo1]

outta nowhere apparently. Excellent hire.

 

[shields]

One year he was there.

 

[xkiesterx]

Was making about $1 million a year at Oklahoma State. Wildly underpaid for his talent. Can't blame him at all.

I for one am not excited to play him. What a job he has done the last four years.

 

[MadRU]

They will play hard.

 

[LC-88]

My guess is he will be able to keep the incoming class together.

 

[bac2therac]

its an arms race....seems like a very good hire, they must have had their eye on him.

Coaches not staying a year at another Power 5 program. Proves that despite most writing Illinois off, the program still has enough cache in the pecking order of college basketball

notice what NC State hired

 

[Russ Wood]

I don't know why some people are down on the Kevin Keatts hire. Each year he was at UNC-W they won more games than the season before: 18, 25, 29. Same for conference games: 12, 14, 15.

He's a heck of a coach. We're probably 3-5 years away from Williams, K & Boeheim retiring.

Virginia needs to open the checkbook and pay Tony Bennett. I think he's only getting $1.5 million.

 

[NewJerseyHawk]

Keatts is assuredly a better coach and hire than Underwood IMO.....Illinois settled here for a hire because they couldn't land any bigger fish...OK State didn't really make a commitment there at 1M and OKState was dead in the water in mid January, then got very, very hot at the end....OK State will get another good coach.

 

[bac2therac]

its just if you are firing Gottfried who had pretty good success there, what do they expect from Keats

 

[bac2therac]

Keatts is assuredly a better coach and hire than Underwood IMO.....Illinois settled here for a hire because they couldn't land any bigger fish...OK State didn't really make a commitment there at 1M and OKState was dead in the water in mid January, then got very, very hot at the end....OK State will get another good coach.

how so? Underwood did incredible work at SF Austin. He got them to 3 NCAAs and won like 90 games and two NCAA games He can win at Illinois. Keatts won alot of games too, seems comparable to Underwood no and Underwood did well this year at OSU. Keats has to deal with K and Williams. Its tougher to win at NC State than Illinois

 

[MADHAT1]

Underwood was a good hire for the Illi, but he didn't take over a terribly Cowboy program from Travis Ford.
Oklahoma St had a bad year ( 12-20, 9th in B-12) and seemed on downward trend
18-14 (6th conference) in 2014-15 , but in NCAAs 3 of Fords last 4 years.
His one year as Cowboy HC can't be considered turning a bad program around, but
would be reasonable to assume he was making it a winning program again, based on what he did at Stephen F. Austin and the Cowboys 20-13 (9-9 conference) record in 2016-17 with a NCAA appearance.

 

[RU_Planning]

I think Keatts was a great hire for NCSU. He's relatively young and they didn't do the whole song and dance of getting rejected by dream candidates.

Underwood is an excellent coach, but I'm not so sure his style of play will work in the B10. I did think it was a perfect approach for the Big 12, but if OK St with all their money doesn't want to pay him, it makes sense to move on.

 

[Russ Wood]

its just if you are firing Gottfried who had pretty good success there, what do they expect from Keats

You're making the mistake of thinking logically. When discussing decisions made at NC State you have to think differently.

 

[RU_Planning]

You're making the mistake of thinking logically. When discussing decisions made at NC State you have to think differently.

Mark Gottfried is a very overrated coach. His programs end up in disarray because he lacks the ability to run a tight ship and discipline players. Basically the environment becomes a free for all. Of course that allows him to recruit some really talented players, but for true success their needs to be discipline and buy in from players and he lacks the ability to do that.

 

[RU_Planning]

Good article on what happened at Oklahoma State with Underwood.

https://www.google.com/amp/m.newsok.com/article/5542248/amp