Like anything there is no one answer that leads to what's happened.
The biggest thing is the administrative disaster that was David Harris, he did incredible damage in 7 years and UNIs budget was less in real dollars when he left than when he got there. I'm 100% sure he's a nice guy and was great while doing the student services/non-public facing role that he had in Ames before getting the UNI job. The problem with that is that he isn't charismatic, he isn't personable and comes off as somewhere between arrogant and aloof and that doesn't inspire much confidence to donors. The three big projects that got completed while he was here were more in spite of him than because of him.
As for basketball specifically, I think this year is just UNIs turn to get hit and it's not unusual at the Valley level. 15 of the 16 all league guys from last year are gone, 23 of the top 25 scorers are gone, there are only 16 of 60 returning starters left right now and 5 of those are from Valpo who finished dead last by a wide margin, i.e. nobody wanted them. Now that we're a few years into the NIL era, the Valley, WCC, A10 and AAC are AAA affiliates of the P5. Some kids like Heise are going to get called up, others like Duax needed to move down to have more success. Born got a check somewhere. Landon Wolf's Dad and Jake didn't get along. These are kids that might have stuck it out in the past that now have options to move. UNIs two portal commits, Ben Schwieger and Max Weisbrod, are probably steps up from Duax and Wolf.
The criticism of Jake is, and has always been, that he doesn't cast a very wide net in recruiting. He likes high school kids that come from affluent suburbs that played for coaches he knows or coaches that have fairly rigid systems. That strategy gives you a pretty high floor but also reduces your ceiling so unless he has an Adam Koch, Kwadzo Ahelegbe, Seth Tuttle, Jeremy Morgan, Wes Washpun, AJ Green, he's going to be a 19-13 type team that finishes 4th in the Valley. Not a horrible floor but it does get old. This is the first year that he's gone into the portal and gotten kids that he didn't have a previous relationship with so that's encouraging and shows growth.
The bright side is that in 4 months as the interim AD, Bob Bowlsby has gotten $7M in commitments for a basketball practice facility (UNI is the only Valley school that doesn't have one) and shovels should be in the ground by fall. He's embraced NIL and we have a fairly well funded collective for our league and that's only going to get better as time goes on. Francis is finally on his last legs so that is going to help with recruiting big time. The pool of AD candidates they got was deep and impressive and we'll hire a sitting DI AD in the coming days as Bob wants to be out by mid-May.
The Valley is what it's always been historically, the 8th to 11th best league in the country (finished 9th this year), but the gap to the P5 is just bigger because there is so much more money they can throw around. A kid like Kayden Fish could have come to a Valley level school and played big minutes but we don't have a prayer in offering the same kind of facilities, experience, resources and NIL dollars that he'll get being the 12th or 13th guy on a P5 roster and we're going to see more and more of that especially for kids that don't really have pro prospects. They're going to get to live the semi-pro lifestyle that the next tier just can't offer.
TL;DR: UNI isn't dead, it's just an adjustment/reset period while this level figures out what it is.
