Reply to thread

Message

[QUOTE="SoBeCuse, post: 2524582, member: 796"]
The one thing I’ll say is that we don’t have enough bodies this year to try different and more tweaks in the zone and/or press more.  Really thin team with no depth and ZERO strength in the Frontcourt.

Boeheim has said often this year that the zone is much easier to learn than M2M.  So, it’s not out of the realm of possibility to think that better athletes and talent at Duke, also most of them first year players, should be able to grasp the zone in a similar amount of time and play it well.  Also, they have more younger players this season than at Syracuse.  But, like I said Syracuse is thin.

I’ve posted numbers from this site before which often gets conveniently swept under the rug on here.  This is the best pure basketball data site on the web, IMO.  What Vegas is plugged into the most.

Here is pure data and facts.  Also, I think Syracuse’s defense is a tad overrated because they slow the tempo down SO damn much giving fewer possessions to opponents yet the [B]OPPONENT FLOOR % [/B]is the basically the same as Duke’s for instance.

[URL='https://www.teamrankings.com/ncaa-basketball/stat/opponent-floor-percentage']NCAA Basketball Stats - NCAA BB Team Opponent Floor % on TeamRankings.com[/URL]

[URL='https://www.teamrankings.com/ncaa-basketball/stat/defensive-efficiency']NCAA Basketball Stats - NCAA BB Team Defensive Efficiency on TeamRankings.com[/URL]

So, in summary, Duke’s defense overall is better this year.  These numbers also factor in the beginning of the season when they were godawful in their M2M so this confirms how good their zone has been.  They also play a tougher schedule.  11 vs 43 in KP.  I expect it to be better though.  They use it as their primary defense now (for three months now exclusively?), practice it, and have better talent.
[/QUOTE]

Verification

What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?