This one is for the zone stinks dummies (those few left)

[HOFCeluck]

I still don't understand what attributes a guy has that makes him more suited to play zone vs man to man.

 

[BostonOrange]

Ahh, the "Nobody else does it, so it must be bad" argument.

Barcelona is the world's best soccer team.

They have an approach to the game that no one else has.

They use smaller, quicker players, ball control (70%+ time of possession) and pass vertically into seams created by all the movement.

They "recruit" or "sign" players that match their offensive scheme.

I wonder if after they lose a game --- which does happen --- if Spaniards are asking why Barcelona doesn't mimic Manchester United and just about every other team in their offensive approach.

Not sure I'm buying that analogy. There are a lot of teams that would like to play Barca's style...it works because they have the highest payroll in the world and one of those high priced players happens to be a transcendent superstar. As for the zone...I've articulated my position about a million times but why not once more. I think it is works very well if you have the right personnel - big guards, lanky athletic forwards, and a shot blocking center. But, I think it has its drawbacks. For one thing you can't play 3 guards (at least not much) because the opponent can target the little guy on the baseline (like Paul Harris), which kind of sucks when you have 3 guards who are among your best players. You can't recruit undersized power forwards because they aren't mobile enough to get out on shooters (Craig Smith types). Little guards are a liability because they can't disrupt passing lanes, get out on shooters (Flynn), and their biggest defensive advantage (ball pressure) is negated in a zone. So...overall I think it limits you from a recruiting perspective because there are a lot of guys that just don't fit us very well. With that said, in recent years JB has done a VERY good job of targeting guys that are a really good fit for the zone. In the post probation years I thought the lack of flexibility really hurt us, but now we have become such a recruiting power that we don't have much of a problem finding high quality players that fit the system. So...overall...I don't think the zone is perfect, but if we could have JB for the next 80 years playing his zone that would be ok with me.

 

[BostonOrange]

I still don't understand what attributes a guy has that makes him more suited to play zone vs man to man.

Big, lanky, and slow of foot.

 

[Knicks411]

Big, lanky, and slow of foot.

Yeah I can definitely think of some players more suited to man than zone. Bigger, often slower, guards. How many super quick PG have we had the last decade? Jonny, and I guess Josh Wright (LOL). More often than not we don't play 2 post players together; we get away with that because it's a lot harder to isolate post up players in thew zone without the center being involved (and also because there aren't a lot of teams that have 2 post players on offense either).

But in general, I think in zone you value length over quickness.

 

[Orangezoo]

I thought it was a pretty good analogy too ... but I'm not sure many would understand the pure brilliance of developing a style of play that is so much at odds with the conventional wisdom and at the same time so effective.

I'm a relatively new soccer fan and it took me a while to appreciate the game at its highest level and to understand that there are different styles of play.

I first watched a lot of the EPL. The emphasis there was on big, rugged players on defense and bringing the ball down the sideline and crossing it to brilliant forwards like Wayne Rooney, Van Persie, Carlos Tevez and Luis Suarez. There are any number of physical specimens like Adebayor and Peter Crouch and there was Didier Drogba. These guys are twice Xabi Alonzo's size.

I had an opportunity to see Barcelona play a couple of times at Camp Nou, once against Real Madrid. I recognized that what these guys were doing out there was fundamentally different than what I had seen anywhere else. And that it was devastatingly effective.

I liked the Arsenal team from two years ago with Samir Nasri and Ces Fabregas ... two of the niftiest passers. They had more ball control than most. But they still couldn't do what Messi and those guys can do.

barca is probably the only team 100 percent committed to playing that style.. arsenal shows spurts.. real madrid as well but barca always seems to have that quick, accurate, somewhat similar to a princeton offense of football approach.A few of the mexican league teams actually have a similar approach but its faster and far less accurate.. i def agree the analogy works.

 

[Quazzum69]

The zone vs man-to-man argument is so ridiculous for so many reasons:

1) How many high-level teams play zone the majority of the time? Not many, if any. So basically you are comparing the performance of one zone-playing team to hundreds of man-to-man teams. If the one team that plays zone isn't the best defensive team does that mean zone sucks?

2) I'm not saying JB is a hack or we've had crappy players but just imagine a zone with Michael Kidd-Gilchrest and Anthony Davis or any other team that was absolutely stacked - it would be unstoppable and everyone would say how great zone is.

3) Until someone breaks breaks down zone vs man with advanced metrics by possession, etc. (which is impossible since you pretty much only have Syracuse for zone) how can you say man is better than zone?

The game is continuously evolving, including Syracuse teams. When teams have lineups that are all hybrid players between 6'7 and 6'10 and are athletic and long (which is pretty much the prototypical basketball player and pretty close to what we have) the zone seems perfect. In thirty years, zone may be the exclusive defense and Boeheim will be seen as the grandfather of the next era.

 

[OttoinGrotto]

I still don't understand what attributes a guy has that makes him more suited to play zone vs man to man.

Not as much about any one player as it is about how 5 fit together.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk 2

 

[ORRange]

blah,blah. This team has all the answers. It is the best pressing team we've ever had. We have incredible defensive length at every position and are very young. JB and his staff have fine tuned the art of recruiting for the 2/3 and from now on the work will be on display. What you have been seeing the past 4 years is not by accident. The staff recruits the players for their system, NOT the other way around. We are in the midst of something great here. MCW is the greatest young college point guard I've seen since Magic. We will lose some games this year but nobody will want to play us in the spring when theses guys start to understand where they are suppose to be in the zone. And did I mention the press and that kid MCW? He totally dominates the game every time he laces them up and hasn't even scratched his potential. When March comes around MCW is going to be something to watch. By draft time I expect him to go top 3. Oh, and by the way Ennis is really good. I sound like Dukie V for good reason, did I tell you about MCW?

 

[CorduroyG]

blah,blah. This team has all the answers. It is the best pressing team we've ever had. We have incredible defensive length at every position and are very young. JB and his staff have fine tuned the art of recruiting for the 2/3 and from now on the work will be on display. What you have been seeing the past 4 years is not by accident. The staff recruits the players for their system, NOT the other way around. We are in the midst of something great here. MCW is the greatest young college point guard I've seen since Magic. We will lose some games this year but nobody will want to play us in the spring when theses guys start to understand where they are suppose to be in the zone. And did I mention the press and that kid MCW? He totally dominates the game every time he laces them up and hasn't even scratched his potential. When March comes around MCW is going to be something to watch. By draft time I expect him to go top 3. Oh, and by the way Ennis is really good. I sound like Dukie V for good reason, did I tell you about MCW?

so youre saying mcw is a PTPer?

 

[Townie72]

Not sure I'm buying that analogy. There are a lot of teams that would like to play Barca's style...it works because they have the highest payroll in the world and one of those high priced players happens to be a transcendent superstar. As for the zone...I've articulated my position about a million times but why not once more. I think it is works very well if you have the right personnel - big guards, lanky athletic forwards, and a shot blocking center. But, I think it has its drawbacks. For one thing you can't play 3 guards (at least not much) because the opponent can target the little guy on the baseline (like Paul Harris), which kind of sucks when you have 3 guards who are among your best players. You can't recruit undersized power forwards because they aren't mobile enough to get out on shooters (Craig Smith types). Little guards are a liability because they can't disrupt passing lanes, get out on shooters (Flynn), and their biggest defensive advantage (ball pressure) is negated in a zone. So...overall I think it limits you from a recruiting perspective because there are a lot of guys that just don't fit us very well. With that said, in recent years JB has done a VERY good job of targeting guys that are a really good fit for the zone. In the post probation years I thought the lack of flexibility really hurt us, but now we have become such a recruiting power that we don't have much of a problem finding high quality players that fit the system. So...overall...I don't think the zone is perfect, but if we could have JB for the next 80 years playing his zone that would be ok with me.

On the Barca anology ... Forget salaries. If you put Messi or any of them on Man U or Bayern Munich or AC Milan, they are just good players. Individually, they aren't any better than Tevez or Suarez or Rooney or a number of others. But in combination with one another and in the right offense, they are devastating. And that's the point here, that its the combination of scheme and talent.

I'll go with Bobby Knight's observations last year as to the quality of the SU zone. He was gushing about it ... and he's the man-to-man guru.

You failed above to mention two very positive attributes of the zone. First, the guards are almost always up top and can get into transition much easier than M-T-M guards that are chasing their man all over the court. Secondly, Zone requires far less energy to be expended.

The uniqueness of the zone is another aspect of it. Because teams don't see it very often, those that do encounter it --- such as in the NCAA tourney --- have a great deal of trouble solving it.

 

[Knicks411]

The uniqueness of the zone is another aspect of it. Because teams don't see it very often, those that do encounter it --- such as in the NCAA tourney --- have a great deal of trouble solving it.

I am not sure I can reconcile that with the fact that we have basically performed as expected, or possibly slightly underperformed, our seeding in the NCAA tournament.

 

[Townie72]

I am not sure I can reconcile that with the fact that we have basically performed as expected, or possibly slightly underperformed, our seeding in the NCAA tournament.

Some other factors like injury to Arinze and Fab's problems and hot shooting that no defense would have stopped..

 

[Knicks411]

Some other factors like injury to Arinze and Fab's problems and hot shooting that no defense would have stopped..

If anyone had the time andt he info I'd love to be able to see how our defense fares historically in the NCAA tournament historically. I have no idea; I know the cliche is that teams that aren't used to the zone will struggle against it; I wonder if that holds up.

 

[OttoMets]

Some other factors like injury to Arinze and Fab's problems and hot shooting that no defense would have stopped..

Hot shooting and Fab, sure, I could buy that. Our loss to Butler can't be pinned on the zone, though. Defense was fine without Arinze; offensive ineptitude lost that one. And that's been a common theme in the past decade.

Many of us like the zone and feel that other teams struggle because they don't have a lot of practice against it. Our opponents have also reached the tournament on merit and have defensive tricks up their sleeve that throws our offense equally out of rhythm. It wouldn't matter if we played zone, man, or box-and-one against Vermont, Butler, and Marquette. They controlled the tempo and our offense didn't get the buckets needed to win the game. It doesn't matter if our zone is unique or foreign to the opponent. There's a lot more that goes into winning a tournament game than stopping the other team. We've lost enough games played in the 50s and low-60s to recognize that.

 

[shermstheman]

We're the #4 team in the country and haven't played anyone in the top 20. Where would you expect our stats to fall?

So, ignoring that those who don't favor the zone don't necessarily believe it can't be effective, but dislike it for myriad reasons, consider among the "dummies" people like Coach K, Brad Stevens, Izzo, Roy, Calipari... essentially, every other coach.

Not every other coach, the zone is used far more by teams than it was 10 years ago and its due to JB's success- Pitino and Thompson come to mind. and Coach K played it some last year. A lot of teams use the zone, few are dedicated to it.

 

[OttoMets]

If anyone had the time andt he info I'd love to be able to see how our defense fares historically in the NCAA tournament historically. I have no idea; I know the cliche is that teams that aren't used to the zone will struggle against it; I wonder if that holds up.

Without getting into percentages, Oklahoma (2009), Kansas (2001 - though I think we mixed zone and man that day with an equal lack of success), Michigan State, Alabama, and Texas sure didn't seem to. Kansas (1996), Butler, and Vermont certainly did; for the last two, that didn't matter as much as some would like to think.

 

[Knicks411]

Without getting into percentages, Oklahoma (2009), Kansas (2001 - though I think we mixed zone and man that day with an equal lack of success), Michigan State, Alabama, and Texas sure didn't seem to. Kansas (1996), Butler, and Vermont certainly did; for the last two, that didn't matter as much as some would like to think.

For me the one that stands out as having no idea was Oklahoma 2003. But then the very next game we played Texas, who lit us up (84points in 76 possessions) but it didn't matter cause they couldn't stop us.

I also think using the "hot shooting that would have beaten us no matter what" is kind of a cop out. Our zone results in the other team shooting lots of jumpers. It's definitely true that sometimes a team just shoots the lights out, but I guess my point is if a team bricks a ton of 3's then we want to credit the defense, but when they make them a lot of the time we just chalk it up to hot shooting. I think it goes both ways.

 

[OttoMets]

For me the one that stands out as having no idea was Oklahoma 2003. But then the very next game we played Texas, who lit us up (84points in 76 possessions) but it didn't matter cause they couldn't stop us.

I also think using the "hot shooting that would have beaten us no matter what" is kind of a cop out. Our zone results in the other team shooting lots of jumpers. It's definitely true that sometimes a team just shoots the lights out, but I guess my point is if a team bricks a ton of 3's then we want to credit the defense, but when they make them a lot of the time we just chalk it up to hot shooting. I think it goes both ways.

That's right. Oklahoma had a hot shooting night in 2009, but lots of teams had hot shooting nights against the zone in 2008 and 2009. Maybe they were hot because they were playing our defense. When you don't guard Tony Crocker, he hits jump shots.

 

[Townie72]

That's right. Oklahoma had a hot shooting night in 2009, but lots of teams had hot shooting nights against the zone in 2008 and 2009. Maybe they were hot because they were playing our defense. When you don't guard Tony Crocker, he hits jump shots.

And when you crowd him 25' from the basket, he goes around you.

 

[OttoMets]

And when you crowd him 25' from the basket, he goes around you.

I guess I don't remember enough about the guy, but wasn't he mainly a stand-still jumpshooter?

Our defense was so uninspired for much of that season; man or zone, a good perimeter player would have been able to choose between shooting over or driving through our players. More recently, we've been able to neutralize more talented players than Tony Crocker.

 

[Knicks411]

I don't remember Tony Crocker being a guy who was vexing defenses that season

 

[BostonOrange]

On the Barca anology ... Forget salaries. If you put Messi or any of them on Man U or Bayern Munich or AC Milan, they are just good players. Individually, they aren't any better than Tevez or Suarez or Rooney or a number of others. But in combination with one another and in the right offense, they are devastating. And that's the point here, that its the combination of scheme and talent.

I'll go with Bobby Knight's observations last year as to the quality of the SU zone. He was gushing about it ... and he's the man-to-man guru.

You failed above to mention two very positive attributes of the zone. First, the guards are almost always up top and can get into transition much easier than M-T-M guards that are chasing their man all over the court. Secondly, Zone requires far less energy to be expended.

The uniqueness of the zone is another aspect of it. Because teams don't see it very often, those that do encounter it --- such as in the NCAA tourney --- have a great deal of trouble solving it.

Another positive aspect is that we seldom get in foul trouble. I will take issue with two of your comments. 1. Messi isn't better than Rooney??? I don't care the system, he is much better. 2. I think the thing about teams in the tourney having trouble solving it is largely a myth. We haven't beaten a team seeded equal to or higher than us in 8 years. I'm not really blaming the zone for that, as others have pointed out our Offense has laid a few eggs (VT, Butler), but I can recall several thrashings of the zone as well (Ok, Wisc, Oh St)

 

[BostonOrange]

I guess I don't remember enough about the guy, but wasn't he mainly a stand-still jumpshooter?

Our defense was so uninspired for much of that season; man or zone, a good perimeter player would have been able to choose between shooting over or driving through our players. More recently, we've been able to neutralize more talented players than Tony Crocker.

That was a good example of a season where the zone didn't fit the personnel. Flynn and Harris could have been good M2M defenders but were too small for their spots in the zone. Devo it didn't matter what defense you were in he was going to be terrible. The recent teams have been much more suited for the zone, in my opinion.

 

[Townie72]

I guess I don't remember enough about the guy, but wasn't he mainly a stand-still jumpshooter?

Our defense was so uninspired for much of that season; man or zone, a good perimeter player would have been able to choose between shooting over or driving through our players. More recently, we've been able to neutralize more talented players than Tony Crocker.

I* wasn't talking about Crocker specifically, but just about any very good guard. You can't go all that far out without paying the price for it.

This business about man-to-man being all that better at shutting down a hot outside shooting team is IMHO a myth carried forward by TV announcers who never played or coached. If m-t-m is any better, its not all that much better especially against the extended zone that SU plays.

 

[OttoMets]

That was a good example of a season where the zone didn't fit the personnel. Flynn and Harris could have been good M2M defenders but were too small for their spots in the zone. Devo it didn't matter what defense you were in he was going to be terrible. The recent teams have been much more suited for the zone, in my opinion.

Exactly. And Flynn and Harris did play a prominent role in our comeback against Kansas, sparked by a switch to man.

Devendorf didn't have enough desire to be good in any defense.