Steph Curry killed our zone

[OrangeFoo]

Opponents shot 32.9% from 3 against us and made almost 8 threes a game against us this year. Back in the days of peak zone... opponents made closer to 30% from 3 or even less against us.

Where does Steph Curry fit into this? There is a conversation going on in the NBA about how Steph ruined the game becaus every kid thinks they can be like Steph and high school games have devolved into 3 point shooting contests. The zone concept worked great before Steph Curry because we could give up open 3s and it wasn’t an automatic make. Teams would have have one, maybe two, guys who could shoot the three and we could game plan against them. Now, becaus Of Steph, every team has a legit 4 guys who can hit a three if they are wide open. This evolution has changed the offensive strategy in college hoops... it hit the NBA a few years ago but now it’s trickled down to college. The old way to beat the zone was to get the ball to the logo and dump it to the short corner for a layup or pass it to either 10:30 or 1:30 on the 3pt line for an open 3. This year the strategy seems to have shifted hunt the corner 3s and teams are making multiple passes to get a corner 3. In the games we have gotten destroyed by threes I feel like we have given up open corner 3 after open corner 3. Our strategy today is the center or 4 has to get out to guard that corner 3... which works great if you have Hakim. When you have Chukwu abd Sidibe you get exposed.

I don’t think playing our zone is going to work in the Steph Curry era of basketball. It we need to accept the zone will get bombed and try to outscore teams.

 

[Funk Doc]

Opponents shot 32.9% from 3 against us and made almost 8 threes a game against us this year. Back in the days of peak zone... opponents made closer to 30% from 3 or even less against us.

Where does Steph Curry fit into this? There is a conversation going on in the NBA about how Steph ruined the game becaus every kid thinks they can be like Steph and high school games have devolved into 3 point shooting contests. The zone concept worked great before Steph Curry because we could give up open 3s and it wasn’t an automatic make. Teams would have have one, maybe two, guys who could shoot the three and we could game plan against them. Now, becaus Of Steph, every team has a legit 4 guys who can hit a three if they are wide open. This evolution has changed the offensive strategy in college hoops... it hit the NBA a few years ago but now it’s trickled down to college. The old way to beat the zone was to get the ball to the logo and dump it to the short corner for a layup or pass it to either 10:30 or 1:30 on the 3pt line for an open 3. This year the strategy seems to have shifted hunt the corner 3s and teams are making multiple passes to get a corner 3. In the games we have gotten destroyed by threes I feel like we have given up open corner 3 after open corner 3. Our strategy today is the center or 4 has to get out to guard that corner 3... which works great if you have Hakim. When you have Chukwu abd Sidibe you get exposed.

I don’t think playing our zone is going to work in the Steph Curry era of basketball. It we need to accept the zone will get bombed and try to outscore teams.

Bingo...the game has changed. Our defense, and recruiting targets have not.

 

[Millhouse]

Opponents shot 32.9% from 3 against us and made almost 8 threes a game against us this year. Back in the days of peak zone... opponents made closer to 30% from 3 or even less against us.

Where does Steph Curry fit into this? There is a conversation going on in the NBA about how Steph ruined the game becaus every kid thinks they can be like Steph and high school games have devolved into 3 point shooting contests. The zone concept worked great before Steph Curry because we could give up open 3s and it wasn’t an automatic make. Teams would have have one, maybe two, guys who could shoot the three and we could game plan against them. Now, becaus Of Steph, every team has a legit 4 guys who can hit a three if they are wide open. This evolution has changed the offensive strategy in college hoops... it hit the NBA a few years ago but now it’s trickled down to college. The old way to beat the zone was to get the ball to the logo and dump it to the short corner for a layup or pass it to either 10:30 or 1:30 on the 3pt line for an open 3. This year the strategy seems to have shifted hunt the corner 3s and teams are making multiple passes to get a corner 3. In the games we have gotten destroyed by threes I feel like we have given up open corner 3 after open corner 3. Our strategy today is the center or 4 has to get out to guard that corner 3... which works great if you have Hakim. When you have Chukwu abd Sidibe you get exposed.

I don’t think playing our zone is going to work in the Steph Curry era of basketball. It we need to accept the zone will get bombed and try to outscore teams.

our zone didn't get bombed over the whole season 33% or in confernce 33%

Last year 32% overall, 34% conference

we got killed 2 years ago though 34% and 39% conference. That's the gillon year.

anything can happen in one game, man or zone.

but we won't be great until we find someone who can toss out that tradeoff between big PG and PG with speed and shooting

 

[HoustonCuse]

Have you guys ever noticed how the game passes JB by every single year when we lose in the NCAA Tournament? 32 teams will lose between yesterday and today and almost all of them will lose playing man to man defense. Every cockamamey theory about why the zone is outdated or ineffective is just emotional ranting. It's a defense. Everybody plays the defense they think will best help them win. Get a grip.

Maybe SWC75 could do his magic and run the numbers to look at the defensive efficiency and points per game allowed in the NCAA Tournament this decade amongst teams with at least 8 or 10 games played or whatever crietria. I would bet Syracuse is Top 5 and could be #1 in that metric. How can that be explained by "Steph Curry ruined the Syracuse zone" or "Charles Barkely says zone is the easiest defense to play against" or "Aliens!!" or pick your flavor of the minute theory?

 

[OrangeFoo]

our zone didn't get bombed over the whole season 33% or in confernce 33%

Last year 32% overall, 34% conference

we got killed 2 years ago though 34% and 39% conference. That's the gillon year.

anything can happen in one game, man or zone.

but we won't be great until we find someone who can toss out that tradeoff between big PG and PG with speed and shooting

You are right we didn’t get bombed over the entire season but in certain games, like last night and three or four other games this year, we got bombed and had no plan b. The zone is no longer the weapon it used to be against high quality competition, the teams we aspire to be and aspire to beat will get and hit any shot they want. If we don’t adapt we will be an average program susceptible to losing to any team having a halfway decent shooting night. That will put us exactly where we are today... 20 wins and double digit losses in the regular seasons and NCAA runs entirely dependent on the whether the other team misses wide open shots.

A PG isn’t going to change that unless we are planning to outscore the big boys.

 

[44PRIDE]

our zone didn't get bombed over the whole season 33% or in confernce 33%

Last year 32% overall, 34% conference

we got killed 2 years ago though 34% and 39% conference. That's the gillon year.

anything can happen in one game, man or zone.

but we won't be great until we find someone who can toss out that tradeoff between big PG and PG with speed and shooting

You're right...sort of.

Yes, not every team bombed us out. But the top tier teams (Duke, VA...etc) that can stack rosters with shooters did.

And if we are to win a national championship again, we WILL need to face teams loaded with shooters.

 

[Orangemen]

Opponents shot 32.9% from 3 against us and made almost 8 threes a game against us this year. Back in the days of peak zone... opponents made closer to 30% from 3 or even less against us.

Where does Steph Curry fit into this? There is a conversation going on in the NBA about how Steph ruined the game becaus every kid thinks they can be like Steph and high school games have devolved into 3 point shooting contests. The zone concept worked great before Steph Curry because we could give up open 3s and it wasn’t an automatic make. Teams would have have one, maybe two, guys who could shoot the three and we could game plan against them. Now, becaus Of Steph, every team has a legit 4 guys who can hit a three if they are wide open. This evolution has changed the offensive strategy in college hoops... it hit the NBA a few years ago but now it’s trickled down to college. The old way to beat the zone was to get the ball to the logo and dump it to the short corner for a layup or pass it to either 10:30 or 1:30 on the 3pt line for an open 3. This year the strategy seems to have shifted hunt the corner 3s and teams are making multiple passes to get a corner 3. In the games we have gotten destroyed by threes I feel like we have given up open corner 3 after open corner 3. Our strategy today is the center or 4 has to get out to guard that corner 3... which works great if you have Hakim. When you have Chukwu abd Sidibe you get exposed.

I don’t think playing our zone is going to work in the Steph Curry era of basketball. It we need to accept the zone will get bombed and try to outscore teams.

That's too funny. I was actually thinking the exact same thing yesterday.

 

[OttoMets]

Have you guys ever noticed how the game passes JB by every single year when we lose in the NCAA Tournament? 32 teams will lose between yesterday and today and almost all of them will lose playing man to man defense. Every cockamamey theory about why the zone is outdated or ineffective is just emotional ranting. It's a defense. Everybody plays the defense they think will best help them win. Get a grip.

Maybe SWC75 could do his magic and run the numbers to look at the defensive efficiency and points per game allowed in the NCAA Tournament this decade amongst teams with at least 8 or 10 games played or whatever crietria. I would bet Syracuse is Top 5 and could be #1 in that metric. How can that be explained by "Steph Curry ruined the Syracuse zone" or "Charles Barkely says zone is the easiest defense to play against" or "Aliens!!" or pick your flavor of the minute theory?

Most years I think Syracuse's season comes to an end when the team can't string together a couple decent offensive trips when they really need a basket.

It's much more rare when the defense comes up short. This season and 2009 against Oklahoma are the only ones that come to mind in recent history. 2001 against Kansas, obviously, everything went wrong.

 

[supp]

our zone didn't get bombed over the whole season 33% or in confernce 33%

Last year 32% overall, 34% conference

we got killed 2 years ago though 34% and 39% conference. That's the gillon year.

anything can happen in one game, man or zone.

but we won't be great until we find someone who can toss out that tradeoff between big PG and PG with speed and shooting

His point is that it's becoming harder and harder to win largely on the back of zone defense, which is what we have been doing for 4 of the past 5 years. You can be good defensively with zone but the offense has to carry its own load to beat peer clubs consistently. Ironically the year we could score fairly consistently was the year we had a historically bad defense (in part, you might argue, because of Boeheim's insistence on playing zone at all costs).

In the end, the only stat that accurately shows our struggles on offense and defense is W-L. You can harp on 3FG percentages as much as you like but we're not beating the top guns, we're losing to the middle group, and it is all having a cumulative effect on recruiting and program perception.

 

[OrangeFoo]

Have you guys ever noticed how the game passes JB by every single year when we lose in the NCAA Tournament? 32 teams will lose between yesterday and today and almost all of them will lose playing man to man defense. Every cockamamey theory about why the zone is outdated or ineffective is just emotional ranting. It's a defense. Everybody plays the defense they think will best help them win. Get a grip.

Maybe SWC75 could do his magic and run the numbers to look at the defensive efficiency and points per game allowed in the NCAA Tournament this decade amongst teams with at least 8 or 10 games played or whatever crietria. I would bet Syracuse is Top 5 and could be #1 in that metric. How can that be explained by "Steph Curry ruined the Syracuse zone" or "Charles Barkely says zone is the easiest defense to play against" or "Aliens!!" or pick your flavor of the minute theory?

Historically I would agree with you but if you haven’t noticed a change in how teams are attacking us and how well our peer set is attacking us the past few years since Steph Curry really blew up I don’t know what to say. This year alone... VaTech, UNC, Baylor, Buffalo, UCONN, Virginia all blew the crap out of our zone. Something that’s usually only happens once or twice a year is happening much more regularly.

 

[HoustonCuse]

Historically I would agree with you but if you haven’t noticed a change in how teams are attacking us and how well our peer set is attacking us the past few years since Steph Curry really blew up I don’t know what to say. This year alone... VaTech, UNC, Baylor, Buffalo, UCONN, Virginia all blew the crap out of our zone. Something that’s usually only happens once or twice a year is happening much more regularly.

And yet, we had the 30th best defensive efficiency in the nation. 300+ teams that play man were worse (against worse competition since we played the 33rd toughest schedule).

 

[djcon57]

Have you guys ever noticed how the game passes JB by every single year when we lose in the NCAA Tournament? 32 teams will lose between yesterday and today and almost all of them will lose playing man to man defense. Every cockamamey theory about why the zone is outdated or ineffective is just emotional ranting. It's a defense. Everybody plays the defense they think will best help them win. Get a grip.

Maybe SWC75 could do his magic and run the numbers to look at the defensive efficiency and points per game allowed in the NCAA Tournament this decade amongst teams with at least 8 or 10 games played or whatever crietria. I would bet Syracuse is Top 5 and could be #1 in that metric. How can that be explained by "Steph Curry ruined the Syracuse zone" or "Charles Barkely says zone is the easiest defense to play against" or "Aliens!!" or pick your flavor of the minute theory?

Name another program that recruits specific players for their defense

 

[HoustonCuse]

Name another program that recruits specific players for their defense

Any team with any kind of intelligence would recruit players who fit the system they're trying to execute. I would suspect you won't find too many employed college coaches who don't.

 

[djcon57]

Any team with any kind of intelligence would recruit players who fit the system they're trying to execute. I would suspect you find too many employed college coaches who don't.

Specifically Defense in college basketball. If you can’t think of any, it’s ok to say that.

 

[Millhouse]

You're right...sort of.

Yes, not every team bombed us out. But the top tier teams (Duke, VA...etc) that can stack rosters with shooters did.

And if we are to win a national championship again, we WILL need to face teams loaded with shooters.

we beat duke and they shot terrible from 3

when other teams miss, it's not the zone. when other teams make, it's the zone.

hardly anyone plays zone and there were 109 teams that have made 16 or more threes with 40 of those teams doing it more than once

 

[Millhouse]

Historically I would agree with you but if you haven’t noticed a change in how teams are attacking us and how well our peer set is attacking us the past few years since Steph Curry really blew up I don’t know what to say. This year alone... VaTech, UNC, Baylor, Buffalo, UCONN, Virginia all blew the crap out of our zone. Something that’s usually only happens once or twice a year is happening much more regularly.

editing - was way off

buffalo was 10-33 30%. UNC was 9-29 31%

6 of our losses we did get bombed big time, i agree with that

 

[stuckinbig11]

not the game I learned years ago

 

[Fly Rodder]

And yet, we had the 30th best defensive efficiency in the nation. 300+ teams that play man were worse (against worse competition since we played the 33rd toughest schedule).

I hate getting into these kind of pissing matches, but isn't weird how few other D1 teams are interested in playing this defense if it is so great? So why not? Is it because they need specific personnel or a specific coach?

I took all the KenPom adjDs since 2008 (12 seasons), threw out a lot of non-P5 teams and some of the mid-majors who didn't have enough seasons, for whatever reason. I ended up with about 1200 team-seasons. The best adjusted D season for Syracuse, the vaunted 2-3 zone, was 41st (2013) overall. Lets use the top-25% (or top-300) as great defensive seasons. Syracuse had nine seasons that ranked in the top 300. Louisville had 10 in the top-300 and 7 were in the top 50 (with one more just outside). Duke had 8 in the top-300 and 2 in the top-50. Wisconsin had 7 in the top-300, and three in the top 50. A middling team like Florida had 6 in the top-300 and 3 in the top-60.

There are plenty of M2M defenses that are as good or better year and year out than the Syracuse zone, which can be very good. I don't think there is enough evidence that it is significantly better than any other defense to justify the sacrifices made elsewhere that need to be made in order for the defense to be very good to great. It's not like UVA or Wisconsin, or Louisville, Florida can only play their defense well enough if they have specific body types at the right positions. They do it with basketball players.

 

[HoustonCuse]

I took all the KenPom adjDs since 2008 (12 seasons), threw out a lot of non-P5 teams and some of the mid-majors who didn't have enough seasons, for whatever reason. I ended up with about 1200 team-seasons. The best adjusted D season for Syracuse, the vaunted 2-3 zone, was 41st (2013) overall. Lets use the top-25% (or top-300) as great defensive seasons. Syracuse had nine seasons that ranked in the top 300. Louisville had 10 in the top-300 and 7 were in the top 50 (with one more just outside). Duke had 8 in the top-300 and 2 in the top-50. Wisconsin had 7 in the top-300, and three in the top 50. A middling team like Florida had 6 in the top-300 and 3 in the top-60.

I honestly have no idea what any of that means.

There are plenty of M2M defenses that are as good or better year and year out than the Syracuse zone, which can be very good. I don't think there is enough evidence that it is significantly better than any other defense to justify the sacrifices made elsewhere that need to be made in order for the defense to be very good to great. It's not like UVA or Wisconsin, or Louisville, Florida can only play their defense well enough if they have specific body types at the right positions. They do it with basketball players.

Point agreed to - there are multiple ways to accomplish the task of trying to limit your opponent's scoring.

The other point - that we have sacrificed the overall health of our program to recruit players who can only play zone and do nothing else in the game - is a completely fabricated "fact" that was incubated here on this message board. It is preposterous on its face. I know that JB looks for attributes that will enhance a player's effectiveness in the zone defense. If he didn't, he should be fired. But leap from that fact to the fantasy that nobody who has attributes conducive to playing zone can have other basketball skills is not supported by any logic or facts. Period.

I could see the logic of this argument if Boeheim regularly brought in volleyball players or pole vaulters or something and then tried to get them to play basketball just because they had one attribute that was good for the zone, but this is just not happening. Nothing even remotely close to this is happening. It's a made up meme.

 

[Millhouse]

I hate getting into these kind of pissing matches, but isn't weird how few other D1 teams are interested in playing this defense if it is so great? So why not? Is it because they need specific personnel or a specific coach?

It's a good question because I don't think basketball coaches are as stupid as football coaches. Here's my best stab at it. Most schools can't recruit people tall enough with plausible athleticism to be effective. The schools that can recruit people tall enough and athletic enough to go zone are more likely to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

I think the zone is like the spread. It can hurt you if you want to go undefeated but it makes it easier to be pretty good. Higher floor, slightly lower ceiling.

 

[malpearl31]

we got bombed and had no plan b.

What was Virginia’s “plan B” last year against UMBC? Did Tony Bennett switch to a matchup zone when their patented “pack line defense” was getting shredded by a 16 seed? What about today’s UVA game? Down 14 in the first half and do you know what “plan B” defense they switched to so they could get back into the game? (I’ll give you a hint, they changed nothing.)

The whole concept of Boeheim’s Achilles’ heel being the lack of a “plan B” defense is silly. Especially since the zone can (and does) adjust in response to particular strategies that the opponent uses.

 

[djcon57]

What was Virginia’s “plan B” last year against UMBC? Did Tony Bennett switch to a matchup zone when their patented “pack line defense” was getting shredded by a 16 seed? What about today’s UVA game? Down 14 in the first half and do you know what “plan B” defense they switched to so they could get back into the game? (I’ll give you a hint, they changed nothing.)

The whole concept of Boeheim’s Achilles’ heel being the lack of a “plan B” defense is silly. Especially since the zone can (and does) adjust in response to particular strategies that the opponent uses.

What was Syracuse’s plan B vs UVA in the elite 8 a couple years ago? You think we win the game if we sit back in the zone the entire game?

What was Syracuse’s plan B vs Oklahoma State in 2003? You think we win the game if we sit back in the zone the entire game?

 

[Marty McFly]

throwing trunk monkey out there, is not the plan B we are talking about. Now if you say the game he switched to man to beat Kansas in Kansas City, i'll get behind that.

 

[malpearl31]

I honestly have no idea what any of that means.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that Ken Pomeroy seconds this statement.

Is that guy seriously arguing that by using KenPom data as a starting point, he has come up with a better way to calculate defensive efficiency that results in SU’s defense ranking substantially worse? The last 10 years, KenPom has our AdjD rankings as: 30th, 5th, 119th, 18th, 20th, 13th, 6th, 16th, 17th and 14th. But his formula has our best season in that same span as 41st? Okaaaaay.

 

[malpearl31]

What was Syracuse’s plan B vs UVA in the elite 8 a couple years ago? You think we win the game if we sit back in the zone the entire game?

What was Syracuse’s plan B vs Oklahoma State in 2003? You think we win the game if we sit back in the zone the entire game?

You agree with me, then - that Boeheim does have a “plan B”. (Full-court pressure in this example, which turns into the same 2-3 zone if they break the press.)

I was responding to a poster who was insinuating that we have no “plan B”, which you’ve helped me prove is an absurd statement to make.