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Message: [QUOTE="Forza Azzurri, post: 2134810, member: 1452"] Agree with your title. Disagree with your reasoning... [URL="http://www.chron.com/sports/college-basketball-men/article/Men-s-college-basketball-scoring-hitting-new-lows-4244885.php"]Men's college basketball scoring hitting new lows[/URL] [URL="https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-zone-defenses-are-taking-over-1490125427"]Why Zone Defenses Are Taking Over[/URL] I think there is a convergence of two things that is boxing JB, and his zone, into a corner. The first is that so many teams are now playing zone at least some of the time that teams see it much more often - so they prepare for it more and they know how to attack it. This means that you cannot just play zone anymore, you have to play a really good zone to have an effective defense. This was not the case 10 and 15 years ago. 10 and 15 years ago, the zone was such a rarity that even a mediocre zone was tough for teams to attack. The second is that this year showed that player continuity is essential for having a really good zone. Plugging in new guys all the time means too many players who don't know how to play it properly. And when you have too many guys who are trying to learn the zone, you get this year's defense. Ugly. Using SWC's post about early entries to the draft, it is clear that high roster turnover is just going to be a fact of life for upper echelon (and even not so upper echelon) programs. So you combine a defense that now needs to be really good to be effective with a defense that needs players to stick around to really play it well and you are setting yourself up for failure unless you change your recruiting tactics and recruit mostly guys who are going to be here for 3 and 4 and 5 years - which means having a talent level that is really hard to win championships with... It is a conundrum... [/QUOTE]

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