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[QUOTE="pokercuse08, post: 4582928, member: 6535"]
Yup, and he's had stretches before where he got pestered about the zone and he stuck to his guns and came out the other side. I graduated in '08 so I was there for one of those stretches of tourney disappointments and NIT appearances, sometimes with a feeble zone. Keep in mind that part of coaching his way, historically (before everyone understood the analytics around the 3-point shot) is that a couple times a year you're going to get lit up in the 2-3 zone by a hot shooting team, and lose to an inferior team. The trade off was that you might give a better team fits by being really good defensively, or pull some big tourney upsets on the short turnaround.

In his mind he could easily be thinking, "Colgate was hot from three, we turned it over too much against Bryant, and we played three of the best teams in the country to a stand still. We could easily have 3 or 4 more wins, and at 20-9 instead of 16-13, we're not even having these discussions. We're a tourney team. Next year we'll be better and less unlucky."

But the reality is, more teams are shooting more 3's and there's now more ground to cover, so that's going to happen more often and you can't write it off when it happens a few times a year anyway, that's part of the trade... They turned it over too much because his teams tend to do that early in the season when they're usually ~only practicing the zone, and they could have lost at home to Richmond, and on the road to Notre Dame and Louisville. Also to NC State. So they could be 12-17 as easily as they could be 20-9. I can't even imagine the view from 12-17 right now.
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