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Message: [QUOTE="HoustonCuse, post: 3702726, member: 87"] As to the why: I think it is two things. 1. He knows it can be an effective defense. It is far more effective than most M2M defenses when played properly with the right personnel. We know that, we've seen it. 2. College teams have very limited practice time so committing to one thing increases the efficiency of practice time. There is also no doubt that this is true and is an absolutely reasonable approach to college basketball. Problems: 1. This is clearly the very worst zone defense I have ever seen. Last night was laughable to an extreme degree. 2. That is likely an outcome of what was said above: there has been far less practice time than a normal season and our players, specifically the top of the zone are particularly ill suited to playing it well. 3. The fundamental problem with item two is that Buddy and JG3 are partly ill suited for the zone due to a lack of length (Joe) and a lack of athleticism (both). Both of those problems would be even more glaring in a M2M defense. Kadary has the length and athleticism to be murderous at the top of the zone, but he doesn't have nearly the experience with it (he also left shooters wide open last night) and that problem isn't likely to be solved overnight. All that said: the typical arguments against playing M2M are outlined above and they are reasonable, even if you don't like it. This year, since the zone is so bad, it might be reasonable to try M2M because how could it be worse. I suspect what JB would say is that using last night's game as a reason to switch is illogical because, while we might do better against a team like UVA, we might lose to other teams as a result of playing a M2M that we didn't get much practice time to refine, or matchups would be different in such a way that the zone would fare better. I would agree partially with that. Let's face it, we can't use UVA as a litmus test to determine if our approaches are valid at this time. We just can't. They have what, 8 losses in ACC play since 2017? And hell I think two of them are to us. So NOBODY does well against them (we maybe one of the best against them in all honesty) and it is a sort fools errand to try to mold our entire approach to that particular team when we are having trouble beating teams of the ilk of Pittsburgh. [/QUOTE]

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