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Message: [QUOTE="NineOneSeven, post: 2015562, member: 871"] Syracuse is the 2-3 zone. Everyone knows it. It's won Jim, and SU, many games over the years. Every now and then (usually with a loss), people suggest playing man defense. It's usually shot down pretty vehemently- on this board by posters, and also by Jim in pressers (we can't play man). The strategy is, quite often, weather the storm. Teams get hot, and you Play the percentages. This has worked plenty of times. However, usually the teams we are fielding are adequate, if not elite, at zone defense. There are outliers in sports. Teams get hot against you and you can't overreact- you play the percentages and things usually regress to the mean. Maybe you lose a game here or there (which we have over the years), but the defense will help you win games more than it will hurt you. Call it heart, call it coaching, call it personnel- whatever you want (it's a combination of all of them)- this recipe has worked a lot for us. But what happens when those outliers are no longer outliers? We always hear that we don't play man because we can't- we are somehow, actually worse at man than zone. Even when we are getting dismantled in zone, somehow man would be worse. Which leads me to my point- it makes sense why we would be bad at man. Our coach has coached primarily zone defense for almost the entirety of his tenure here, especially the last half. The players, therefore, practice mainly zone. So it would then make sense that your team would be bad at it, correct? Playing a defense you don't ever practice- how could you be good at it? So what does that say about our actual, practiced defense then? The zone has been dismantled by St Johns, and a team that went 0-18 in ACC play last season. There's a misconception that man defense is just "stay with your man". Not at all. The rotations required in good man defense are arguably more complicated than in zone. I just can't overlook this statement- D1 players who have played ball many years, "cannot" play zone or man defense. The two most common defenses in the sport. We have a lot of issues out there right now. It's not just coaching, it's not just the system, it's not just the players. It's everything. And it's really bad. This hasn't even touched on the lack of consistent offensive execution (a problem for years, which we have hashed a lot so far this season). I'm pretty lost. Jim is lost. The players are lost. Mariah Carey is still lost. Everyone is lost. [/QUOTE]

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