He inherited a group of players who the year before had come within (possibly) an Offutt free throw make on an and-1 of advancing to the Elite 8 and he had a solid yet unspectacular season finished off by an awful MAC championship loss to Kron and an unspectacular postseason.
That "unspectacular season" was our best conference record and only our 3rd regular season title in 40 years. I'm astounded how many people have forgotten how close our 2012 Tourney run came to not happening. We could have easily lost to Buffalo or Akron in the tournament and we might be sitting here lamenting Groce living off his 2010 laurels. The fact that we consider anything less than an NCAA run a failure is foolhardy IMO. Christian walked into a situation where he couldn't win. His leaving did decimate the program in the short run because it meant we lost two recruiting classes in three seasons. But only one of those was his.