The players clearly thought more of Ime than Joe, as you would expect, one was a former player and long-time assistant who they connected with, the other was his very young replacement (also Ime getting "not fired" probably rallied guys to remember him more fondly than perhaps they might have if he'd still been here.
They're also different coaches, different personalities, different focuses. I'd also say.... players usually are not good judges of overall basketball strategy as weird as it sounds. We've seen it time and again, what players value and what actually produces wins are often not correlated. Also, there are some guy who just associate "he yelled a lot when we screwed up" with good coaching.
I think Ime had a not great start to his time here, had a really nice stretch and closed... solid? Joe had a less up and down year in a lot of ways, even if the results were, he was just kind of meh most of the year, then he made some big mistakes late, adjusted... meh.
I don't think there is a huge difference between the two overall, I think Ime was a bit better in part because he was better prepared, and had a better/deeper staff of his own guys.
Going forward... hard to say.