Your description of Zook sounds very much like Tom Crean, the basketball coach at Marquette, except Crean still makes the mistake of leaving his players out to dry with the media, after he was successful in getting them to commit to playing for him.
From watching Zook's team this year he appears to me to have learned a great deal from his experience at Florida. Illinois could very well end up being a one year wonder team in the next 5 years.
Seeing as how OSU only scored 17 against the Illini, I think Zook knew some things about Troy and probably talked with Urban a few times about how to play against him.