Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="Dave85, post: 4543129, member: 3946"] I would like to see JB do something completely against his nature. I would like to see JB start the game with Virginia playing man-to-man. I have three reasons. First, it will warm up our players who have been started out slow on defense. Second, in years past, our players perk up and play extra hard when playing man to try to prove a point that it's worth doing from time to time. And third, Virginia would completely not expect it and it would shake up their game plan. And then switch the defense to the 2-3 zone after the first few baskets. My hope is this would prevent the early 10 point lead by the opposing team. I know it's kind of pointless to suggest playing man but I just can't help it. I've been an Orange fan for 43 years since the Leo Rautins era. You would think I would learn not to talk about this topic. Here's JB's argument about solely playing 2-3 zone from this article: [URL unfurl="true"]https://www.syracuse.com/orangebasketball/2013/03/syracuse_coach_jim_boeheim_say.html[/URL] "The short history of our zone is we started out as a man-to-man team with some zone and over the years our zone got better, but we still played man,'' Boeheim said. "The problem when you play man, you have to spend an hour on your man defense every day and when you play your preseason games, your non-conference games, if you're playing man your zone isn't getting better.'' "So finally it dawned on me,'' said Boeheim, "after about 27 or 28 years, finally, takes me a while, that if we played zone all the time and didn't waste time playing man to man and put some wrinkles in the zone because we had more time to practice it, that our defense would be better.'' Here's my favorite quote from JB on play zone: "When a man-to-man coach is getting beat, he tells his team to play defense better, he doesn't switch to a zone" [/QUOTE]

Verification: What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?