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Message: [QUOTE="SaltineW, post: 5753448, member: 11014"] I'm not a true zone guy per se, but I have attended more than 20 Syracuse practices over the years and I've also attended a number of coaching clinics that Coach Boeheim spoke at - including one on his 2004 tour after winning the natty. First a little background, then my answer to your provocative question shu! Coach Boeheim ran three traps. One is the one you mentioned. The two guards at the top of the zone would fly at the ball handler right after he crossed half court. The wings would run out to intercept if PG passed to the wings and C was in charge of the entire middle of the court. He had to fly up and get a hand on the ball. It's very hard for a PG to hit the dunker in that trap, as its a very long pass and the C might be able to also get a hand on it. Big, dumb, slow big men couldn't rotate properly until they were Juniors or Seniors, assuming Boeheim had at least two years to develop them and teach them to rotate. For those curious, the two other traps SU used to run out of the 2-3 were: 1. The trap on the Wing. Strong side G and attack the wing pass while ball is in the air. Weak side guard prevents pass back to PG by infiltrating the lane. C takes high Elbow away. Only option to beat this trap was a lob to the dunker or a skit pass to weakside wing. 2. The dreaded corner trap out of a time out. As soon as the ball was in the air on a pass to the corner, the trap sprung. Strong side and G both trap in the corner. PG slips into the lane between the corner and the wing - also can leak into the lane to the high elbow, C takes high elbow or low block away. This trap was pretty much an automatic turnover. Traps out of the 2-3 required mobile, athletic players. Wings needed length and foot speed. Centers had to be mobile and smart. In college hoops, it's very rare for a post player to come into college and be able to move his feet and be in the right spots defensively. This, more than any other factor, is what made Boeheim's zone begin to degrade towards the end. Trapping Zone defenses are a thing of beauty. Denny Crum ran his vaunted full court 2-1-2 which is a trap you never see any more in today's game, but it was lethal, as it could be disguised as a M2M full court press. Where Coach Boeheim was pure genius, was that he developed 3 half-court traps out of a 2-3 zone. If you go back to game tape and watch Magic Johnson's Michigan State team play the 2-3, you see an example of what was IMHO the most suffocating straight up zone I've ever seen played. There was no three point line back then, so the MSU zone wasn't susceptible to being "busted" by daggers. The MSU could pack-in, rebound and run - with Magic running the fast break and passing over the top of the retreating defense. In the 80's, with Sherman Douglas at the point, SU was referred to as the Baby Lakers. SU was able to rebound back then and Sherm ignited the fast break, often lobbing ahead to the high flying Stevie Thompson. By then the three-point shot had been adopted and I think it took college coaches some time to figure out how to pick apart "even" zone defenses like the 2-3 with "odd" high or low 1-4 offensive sets. Rick Pitino was masterful at shredding Boeheim's zone, primarily because he understood it from a once inside the program view. IMHO, with the advent of the three-point line, most zone defenses became to a degree - obsolete. That's where Boeheim and his knowledge of player rotations came into play. It eventually became tough to play the 2-3 with the caliber of athletes that Boeheim was attracting to SU in the later years. The zone that SU ran was very different than a traditional zone, mainly because it accounted for trying to defend three-point shots. Traditional zones can't expand enough to cover up top, the wings and the corners, even though they move, the players acting within them don't rotate like Syracuse players under Boeheim were taught to. Match-up zones exist(ed) also - Temple's Dick Cheney was perhaps the greatest college architect of match-up style of zone where players would play M2M vs any offensive players in their areas. This required the weakside defensive players to simply switch with the on ball defener, who would face guard his man as long as he was on the strong side, even covering him all the way to the weak side. In this respect, a strong side guard or wing might flow through to the weak side and stay there, while the weakside guys flexed to the strong side. What made SU's zone tough to play against for many opponents, especially when the defense had really come together well towards the end of a given season, was that no other team in college baskeball ran it quite the same way -- not even Coach Boeheim's close friend, Coach K at Duke, played it the same way. Therefore, to answer your question Shu, I don't think any zone defense would really work year in and year out in today's game. NCAA basketball now emphasiezes shooting like never before and there are simply too many teams with multiple shooters on them. That's how rosters are designed nowadays. When Coach Shayer went Zone on Siena in the Tournament this year, Siena went cold and Duke won a game they could have easily lost. Siena missed their outside shots and Boozer & Co controlled the boards and Duke was able to limit Siena to one shot and out down the stretch. The zone has a place in the swiss army knife, but most teams playing at a high level are primarily running M2M as their primary defenses. So what would work? A zone that has the right personnel to face guard and not let opposing PG's and Wings get into the paint, while also being able to execute frequent half-court traps -- and it would have to be able simultaneously defend three point shots. That's a big ask for most teams to 100% commit to running a very specific zone and there's a good chance that a team like that could be taken down by a hot shooting team that could pound the glass also -- because rebounding out of a zone is hard when the other team is taking a lot of three's. Most teams take more three's when they face zones, modern coaches have figured out that it's wise to do that. What we don't really see much these days are teams that press for huge chunks of games. A pressing team could implement full court or three-quarter court zone traps. If such a team were stocked with the right personnel, likely a very deep team too, that would be something college hoops hasn't seen in a very long while. Presses inherently give up transition three pointers in today's game. Teams will break the press and pass up dunks or layups for open looks from deep. Imagine that? But that's the way the game is now. IMHO, zones are no longer primary defenses. Not to say they don't work, because if an opponent has trouble shooting and the team implementing the zone can rebound, then popping into a zone (against certain opponents) can mean the difference between a W and an L. [/QUOTE]

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