Surely you realize that Pearl is being coy by saying that. Pearl left a very young and inexperienced roster, but that same roster would have looked much different had Pearl never been fired for his misdeeds and lost recruiting momentum due to the uncertainty of his own future. Regardless, Zo posted respectable results with what he had to work with in Year 1. The questionable coaching concern came in Year 3 when he had firmly established his archaic Devoe-esque system and took a team with Elite 8 talent and experience and struggled to make the NCAAT.
The "deplorable treatment" angle is also quite overstated. An extremely microscopic portion of our fanbase wanted Cuonzo gone for any reason unrelated to the fact that he relatively underachieved in year 3 with a pretty stacked roster, or the simple idea that he wasn't Bruce Pearl, and neither of those reasons were really legitimate coming off of a S16 run, regardless of how it happened. He deserved, and would have received more time based solely off of that equity, even if the following year was easily doomed to be a crash back to earth based on returning talent and the incoming class.
And again, we seemingly agree that Zo left on his own accord. No one forced him out, not even his wife. He had a choice, and he chose the door that left for Berkeley. Good for him, too. He cashed in on a really good NCAA run, and got paid well to do it. He knew his returning roster was a dumpster fire and he reset his clock by heading west.