CAMPAIGN — Compare this year’s Illinois men’s basketball team to the first one coached by Brad Underwood and you have to squint to find any similarities.

Gone is the aggressive defensive style — hell bent on forcing turnovers in an on-line, up-the-line system — that Underwood brought with him from his days at Stephen F. Austin. The offensive style has also evolved. Often. Customized especially for staff.

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

Underwood has proven during his time in Champaign (and that one year he spent in Stillwater, Okla.) that he’s willing to adapt when needed. To ditch the whole plan of a season and move on to something that works better.

Like abandoning his aggressive defense after an 0-6 start in his only season at Oklahoma State and going to the baseline, pairing it with an already tweaked offense led by Jawun Evans that was the most effective in the country. Or last season at Illinois, where the complete switch to the Domask-led predatory game 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 for it. … Last year, I thought we had a pretty good idea where we were going offensively, and three games later, the data was like, ‘This sucks.’ We are not afraid to make these changes.

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

At the center of these changes, however, is Brad Underwood. His willingness to adjust and adapt isn’t necessarily a trait that all coaches share. Some are intent on a specific scheme and system. Underwood, with two stints as a junior varsity coach in the late ’80s to early ’90s and again in the mid-2000s, was practically built for this era of Division I college basketball, where rosters are now rarely the same since year to year.

The huge rate of roster turnover at the JUCO level — at least half the team each season — meant being willing to adapt a style to the team rather than a team to a style.

“I’m sure I’m not afraid to change,” Brad Underwood said. “I want to win and if I have the conviction, another way is better… We had to find a way to improve Marcus last year – make him better. We had to relieve Terrence (Shannon Jr.), relieve Coleman (Hawkins) of the responsibility, and he could handle it. He was the perfect enabler for booty ball and everything we did, and lifted everyone else up. We had the #1 offense in our last game.

“We will change accordingly. If something doesn’t work or we need to change something, I’m not afraid to do that. Wholesale changes we don’t do. We still play fast. We are still playing in the open field. Those things we don’t have to change. Small changes can sometimes work quite well.”

Underwood’s willingness to adapt and adapt, even during a season, is not lost on his players, and they feel comfortable sharing their opinions. Their thoughts on what works and what doesn’t – what they like and what they don’t – are not ignored.

“He’s just an open-minded person,” Kylan Boswell said of his head coach. “It’s kind of hard to play for coaches who are close-minded and don’t listen and don’t take criticism. Always listening and willing to make adjustments. His resume shows that.”

“That part of him is definitely overlooked,” Ty Rodgers added. “I don’t know too many coaches where a player can go and sit in their office and tell them what they see and listen to them and do that.”

Geoff Alexander has seen that side of Brad Underwood more 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 2004-2006 before rejoining Champaign in 2017.

And Alexander saw that Brad Underwood’s willingness to embrace change when necessary goes beyond Xs and Os. He saw that in recruiting. He saw her surfing the transfer portal.

“Everything he does, he’s on top of things,” Alexander said. “It goes back to the international track. We were just ahead of the game and getting ready for this generation of guys that came through, it was just a special, special group. We were there. … He’s a forward thinker, and that allows him to adjust ahead of the game. I think it’s as good as anybody in the country to do that.”