‘He’s on the cutting edge’ | Contents

CHAMPAIGN — When you compare this year’s Illinois men’s basketball team to the first team Brad Underwood coached, you have to squint to find any similarities.

Gone is the aggressive defensive style (on-line, determined to force turnovers up top) that Underwood has brought with him since his days at Stephen F. Austin. His attacking style has also improved. Countless times. It has been specially prepared for personnel.

Underwood’s spread offense gave way to screen action featuring Ayo Dosunmu and Kofi Cockburn. Then Booty ball with Marcus Domask. And now, after an offseason, an offense built around a group of big, three-point shooters specifically designed to find players with those traits.

Underwood has proven throughout his time in Champaign (and that not-so-lonely year in Stillwater, Okla.) that he’s willing to adapt when needed. Throwing away an entire season plan and moving on to something that will work better.

Abandoning his aggressive defense after an 0-6 start to his lone season at Oklahoma State and going with the base pack line is like pairing that with an already tuned, Jawun Evans-led, most efficient offense in the country. Or maybe the full switch to trophy ball that Domask led at Illinois last season occurred in early December.

“It’s very data-driven,” Illinois assistant coach Tyler Underwood said. “If we get enough data points that something isn’t working, we’ll try to find a solution to it. … I thought we had a pretty good idea of ​​where we were going offensively last year, and three games later the data was, ‘This sucks.'” We’re not afraid to make those changes.

“We are very happy with the failure here. We talk a lot about failure. In order to get better, you have to fail to learn the lessons. I think it shows in our program as well. We play some of the best teams in the country because that’s really how you measure where you are. “If you are exposed in one area, you can grow.”

But at the center of these changes is Brad Underwood. The desire to adapt and adapt is not necessarily a trait that all coaches share. Some seek a specific scheme and system. Underwood, a two-time college coach in the late ’80s, early ’90s and mid-2000s, was built for this era of Division I college basketball when rosters were rarely the same from year to year anymore.

The high rate of roster turnover at the JUCO level (at least half of the team each season) meant a willingness to adapt a style to a team rather than a team to adapt to a style.

“I’m definitely not afraid of change,” Brad Underwood said. “I want to win and if I believe the other way is better… Last year we had to find a way to improve Marcus, to make him better. We needed to ease Terrence (Shannon Jr.) and Coleman (Hawkins) from an accountability standpoint, and he could handle that. He was a great facilitator for ‘trophy ball’ and everything we did and it lifted everyone else up. We had the No. 1 offense in our last game.

“We will change accordingly. If something doesn’t work or we need to fix something, I’m not afraid to do it. We are not making wholesale changes. We still play fast. We still play in open court. Things we don’t have to change. Sometimes small changes can go a long way.

Underwood’s willingness to adapt and adapt, even throughout the season, doesn’t go unnoticed by the players, and they feel comfortable sharing their opinions. His thoughts about what works and what doesn’t, what he likes and dislikes are not ignored.

“He’s just an open-minded person,” Kylan Boswell said of his head coach. “It’s a little difficult to play for coaches who are narrow-minded and don’t listen and don’t take criticism. He is always listening and always ready to make adjustments. His resume shows it.”

“That side of him is definitely overlooked,” Ty Rodgers added. “I don’t know too many coaches where a player can walk into their office and tell them what they’re seeing and they can listen and implement it.”

Geoff Alexander has seen this side of Brad Underwood longer than anyone else on the show. Alexander played for him when he was an assistant coach at Western Illinois before joining the Leathernecks as a graduate assistant and working with him. Alexander also worked for Underwood at Daytona State College from 2004-06 before reuniting in Champaign in 2017.

And Alexander has seen that Brad Underwood’s willingness to embrace change when necessary goes beyond X’s and O’s. He saw this in recruiting. He saw this while browsing the transfer portal.

“He is cutting edge in everything he does,” Alexander said. “This goes back to the international piece. We were just ahead of the game and prepared for this generation of players, who are a special, special group. We were there. … He’s an advanced thinker, and that allows him to adapt to the game early on. “I think he’s as good at that as anyone in the country.”