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Message: [QUOTE="Dave85, post: 1806925, member: 3946"] You guys are amazing. So that adds to the perspective on playing M2M. I think during the practices M2M is only played when practicing offensive sets. I don't think they serious spend any time on it. Here's the article from Syracuse.com where JB discusses why he went 100% to the dark side: [URL='http://www.syracuse.com/orangebasketball/index.ssf/2013/03/syracuse_coach_jim_boeheim_say.html']Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim says he learned (slowly) to rely on the zone defense[/URL] [INDENT][SIZE=3] "The short history of our zone is we started out as a man-to-man team with some zone and over the years our zone got better, but we still played man,'' Boeheim said. "The problem when you play man, you have to spend an hour on your man defense every day and when you play your preseason games, your non-conference games, if you're playing man your zone isn't getting better.'' Boeheim said he realized that if the Orange was going to play zone, it had to do it all the time. "So finally it dawned on me,'' said Boeheim, "after about 27 or 28 years, finally, takes me a while, that if we played zone all the time and didn't waste time playing man to man and put some wrinkles in the zone because we had more time to practice it, that our defense would be better.'' There was a side benefit to putting 100 percent effort into the zone. "You don't have that decision that people are always saying to me, well, why don't you switch to your man-to-man,'' Boeheim said. "Well, you can't switch to something you don't have. They stopped asking that question.'' Boeheim said rather than switching out the zone, he is able to make changes to the defense. "[B]When a man-to-man coach is getting beat, he tells his team to play defense better, he doesn't switch to a zone[/B],'' Boeheim said. "When we get beat in our zone for whatever reason it is, we try to change it or play it better.'' Boeheim also noted that while teams can try to prepare for the zone, it's impossible to replicate the nuances of the Orange's defense. It's also impossible for a scout team to simulate the size, length and athleticism of the Syracuse players. "As the years have evolved, not many teams are playing zone and when they play on or practice against it, it's a false sense of security, because you're not playing against our defense,'' Boeheim said. "It's much like when Georgetown had Patrick Ewing. You could practice against their 2-3, 1-3-1, anything you wanted, but at the end of the day when you made your play and made your move and you went to shoot it, he blocked it. You get a false sense of security sometimes at practice.'' [/SIZE][/INDENT] [/QUOTE]

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