"we play no other defense"

[CusefanATL]

Clemson shot 45% from the field (average) and 40% from 3pt range (one made 3 pointer better than being average). Yeah, the zone was clearly the problem.

Their turnovers were low, which we certainly wouldn't have caused more of in m2m, and their offensive rebounds were high. You might have an argument about the offensive rebounds...Might... but that's pretty much it. Otherwise, the defense performed as well as you'd expect.

This thread is a joke

http://www.clemsontigers.com/SportSelect.dbml?&DB_OEM_ID=28500&SPID=103715&SPSID=657833

Look at the wins/losses. They lost to Rutgers at home! The beat us from start to finish!

Make the stats look as easy as you want... but I'll make the final answer easier for you... we lost to a terrible team. And never had a shot of winning. Blame it on the zone or the offense. But its 1 of the 2... and any rational mind blames both.

 

[dollarbill44]

You don't think our offense struggles because Boeheim has been recruiting players specifically for the zone for the past 4-5 years? You don't think having a true point guard helps facilitate offense (instead of finding adequate big guards to run point)? And having a few wings who can actually shoot it and are more than just pogo sticks wouldnt be beneficial?

Everything revolves around the zone. This of course says nothing about how playing zone exclusively kills our once prominent fast break because teams always have a guard or two back, and defensive rebounding suffers do to positioning.

Every system loses effectiveness over time. Teams learn to play against it. It seems pretty clear to me that teams are fairly consistently attacking the zone better than they did a few years ago. Spreading the wings and and putting two big men on the blocks; flashing someone to the foul line; screening the top; etc. Even if they are in effective, they are shortening the game and reducing any advantage our better athletes/players provide.

To me, the zone screams complacency. Jump out of it for two or three sets a half and i think the team would benefit (more if something else is working).

Every argument you made in this post can be countered with examples from the last 3 years before this season (PG: Ennis, MCW; fast breaks: '12 and '13 teams were very good in transition; teams adjusting to the zone: we had as many wins as anyone over those 3 seasons). This is a down year for us due to all of the guys leaving early and injuries to DC and McC.

 

[SWC75]

JB says it in his post presser like it's a strength. even after this beatdown. i 'd say it's our weakness.

Are you going to change your name to tboneman?

 

[SWC75]

please. the bench doesn't even enter into this equation. boeheim gloated today he hasn't played man since '87.

Which would mean we won a national championship playing all zone.

 

[Forza Azzurri]

We scored 53 points, had one player make a basket the first 16 minutes of the game and we'll have a 35 page thread on defense.

Outside of Rak, we were 11-44 from the field and 2-15 from 3 and our defense was the problem?

Alrighty then...

 

[SWC75]

If you bother to watch our zone, you see we make adjustments to make it a different defense for different situations.

If you are playing poorly, it's not going to matter what defense you are in. if you are playing a zone passively, you're going to play worse in a man for man.

 

[skurey]

if you are playing a zone passively, you're going to play worse in a man for man.

There's really no way of proving that.

 

[TheCusian]

It's a loss so we must take time to question everything that has helped us be successful.

 

[Dave85]

JB says it in his post presser like it's a strength. even after this beatdown. i 'd say it's our weakness.

Whenever I watch other teams play man on defense it just doesn't look right. My mind thinks, "what are they doing." This is my favorite JB quote on the subject of this thread:

"When a man-to-man coach is getting beat, he tells his team to play defense better, he doesn't switch to a zone,'' Boeheim said. "When we get beat in our zone for whatever reason it is, we try to change it or play it better.''

After watching Orange basketball for 34 years I've stopped even having the thought about playing man-to-man. It's like asking a devout Christian to stop believing in God. If you want to see man-to-man defense then rooting for the Orange may not be your thing. Here's JB's motivation for just playing 2-3 zone:

"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.''

Boeheim said he realized that if the Orange was going to play zone, it had to do it all the time.

"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.''

There was a side benefit to putting 100 percent effort into the zone.

"You don't have that decision that people are always saying to me, well, why don't you switch to your man-to-man,'' Boeheim said. "Well, you can't switch to something you don't have. They stopped asking that question.''

http://www.syracuse.com/orangebasketball/index.ssf/2013/03/syracuse_coach_jim_boeheim_say.html

 

[Cusefan0307]

Don't you guys get sick of banging your head against the wall? We play zone. It worked pretty well for us on to the final four 2 years ago.

Also Duke beat Louisville today by explicitly playing zone.

 

[AZOrange]

Our offense sucks. Plain and simple.

 

[pearl31]

All i need is a "how many games have YOU won?" and I'll have a bingo.

A preemptive shot. Most impressive!

 

[STEVEHOLT]

We have ZERO bench, and we need to be playing man or pressing? Think before you post man.. Our sophomore class is gonna be the death of us. Buss, BJ and Chino are giving us ZERO production it's that simple.

Did the sophomore class just show up on campus one day armed and demand bball scholarships ? Or did Teflon don have something to do with it ?

 

[kirbivore]

Don't you guys get sick of banging your head against the wall? We play zone. It worked pretty well for us on to the final four 2 years ago.

Also Duke beat Louisville today by explicitly playing zone.

Duke is a primary MTM team. Coach K was able to pick JB's brain about the cuse zone during the Olympics and you can see the results today. I wish JB had done the same thing regarding Duke's defense. I'm not a zone hater but it'd be nice to have another option on those days the zone is getting torched and/or shredded.

 

[44cuse]

JB says it in his post presser like it's a strength. even after this beatdown. i 'd say it's our weakness.

This is a bad basketball team. Zone, M2M, can't throw it in the ocean, TOs,...take your pick. Heck, throw in injuries and recruiting. I guess you could say this is the year to try M2M because this is just not a good team (by SU standards).

If this team could shoot and defense was the sole issue, that might make more sense. But aside from Rak in the post, this team doesn't really do much of anything well. Hard to just point to defense.

44cuse

 

[CusefanATL]

Clemson shot 45% from the field (average) and 40% from 3pt range (one made 3 pointer better than being average). Yeah, the zone was clearly the problem.

Their turnovers were low, which we certainly wouldn't have caused more of in m2m, and their offensive rebounds were high. You might have an argument about the offensive rebounds...Might... but that's pretty much it. Otherwise, the defense performed as well as you'd expect.

This thread is a joke

Where did you get your stats from? They shoot under 42% fg and under 30% from 3 and that includes the cupcake portion and the stats from last night which improved both of those numbers.

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/team/stats/_/id/228/clemson-tigers

 

[NKR1978]

You don't think our offense struggles because Boeheim has been recruiting players specifically for the zone for the past 4-5 years? You don't think having a true point guard helps facilitate offense (instead of finding adequate big guards to run point)? And having a few wings who can actually shoot it and are more than just pogo sticks wouldnt be beneficial?

Everything revolves around the zone. This of course says nothing about how playing zone exclusively kills our once prominent fast break because teams always have a guard or two back, and defensive rebounding suffers do to positioning.

Every system loses effectiveness over time. Teams learn to play against it. It seems pretty clear to me that teams are fairly consistently attacking the zone better than they did a few years ago. Spreading the wings and and putting two big men on the
blocks; flashing someone to the foul line; screening the top; etc. Even if they are in effective, they are shortening the game and reducing any advantage our better athletes/players provide.

To me, the zone screams complacency. Jump out of it for two or three sets a half and i think the team would benefit (more if something else is working).

I agree. I wish we would find basketball players instead of athletes with potential that will be good in the zone. But MCW and Ennis were great point guards. And they were recruited under the philosophy that you're complaining about. This team was supposed to have Ennis and Grant and if they came back we would be a clear top 10 team.

Except for 08-09, we've played zone almost exclusively since I've been Syracuse which goes back to when I stepped on the hill in the fall of 2000. We've had quite a few great teams in that span. And two of the best teams, 2010 and 2012, were able to run effectively and win a whole lot of games against good teams. Now if you're telling me that the coach at Clemson could figure out the zone but Jim Calhoun couldn't (since we won our last three games against him in 2012 before he retired) then you're being ignorant.

We are losing games because this is a mediocre team and mediocre teams lose games to mediocre and below average teams. We are coming off of a stretch of six years with no worse than a 4 seed, a Final Four, Elite 8 and two Sweet 16's. And while 2011 and 2014 were disappointing, we have no first round losses in that span. And if AO doesn't go down and if we played Fab then who knows, but even with those two disappointments we've still had a pretty great run. It can't last forever. And losing guys like MCW and Dion are one thing, but Ennis and Grant leaving was totally unexpected. We have essentially lost four potential starters. That's why we aren't very good.

It just seems so specious to me to entirely blame the playing of the zone. Blame recruiting misses or lack of development. I think those are legitimate arguments. But blaming the zone is asinine because there are teams that play good defense and teams that play bad defense and it really doesn't matter what defense you're playing if you're just not that good at it. We've had five years of great defense before this year.

And we didn't lose yesterday because of the zone. We lost because we're not a great team. This hand wringing over a terrible game in a disappointing g season seems so pointless. Even great coaches have disappointing teams. Jim Calhoun's last team at UConn was terrible and he had great talent on that team. It happens.

 

[CusefanATL]

I agree. I wish we would find basketball players instead of athletes with potential that will be good in the zone. But MCW and Ennis were great point guards. And they were recruited under the philosophy that you're complaining about. This team was supposed to have Ennis and Grant and if they came back we would be a clear top 10 team.

Except for 08-09, we've played zone almost exclusively since I've been Syracuse which goes back to when I stepped on the hill in the fall of 2000. We've had quite a few great teams in that span. And two of the best teams, 2010 and 2012, were able to run effectively and win a whole lot of games against good teams. Now if you're telling me that the coach at Clemson could figure out the zone but Jim Calhoun couldn't (since we won our last three games against him in 2012 before he retired) then you're being ignorant.

We are losing games because this is a mediocre team and mediocre teams lose games to mediocre and below average teams. We are coming off of a stretch of six years with no worse than a 4 seed, a Final Four, Elite 8 and two Sweet 16's. And while 2011 and 2014 were disappointing, we have no first round losses in that span. And if AO doesn't go down and if we played Fab then who knows, but even with those two disappointments we've still had a pretty great run. It can't last forever. And losing guys like MCW and Dion are one thing, but Ennis and Grant leaving was totally unexpected. We have essentially lost four potential starters. That's why we aren't very good.

It just seems so specious to me to entirely blame the playing of the zone. Blame recruiting misses or lack of development. I think those are legitimate arguments. But blaming the zone is asinine because there are teams that play good defense and teams that play bad defense and it really doesn't matter what defense you're playing if you're just not that good at it. We've had five years of great defense before this year.

And we didn't lose yesterday because of the zone. We lost because we're not a great team. This hand wringing over a terrible game in a disappointing g season seems so pointless. Even great coaches have disappointing teams. Jim Calhoun's last team at UConn was terrible and he had great talent on that team. It happens.

If we have AO, we win the title.

If we have Fab, there is an epic showdown against Kentucky.

Those are FACTS.

 

[tbonezone]

If we have AO, we win the title.

If we have Fab, there is an epic showdown against Kentucky.

Those are FACTS.

sorry but those are not facts. they are merely your speculation. try not to confuse the 2.

 

[tbonezone]

"Also Duke beat Louisville today by explicitly playing zone."

so you're saying it is possible to play both well?

 

[AlpharettaCuse]

well about 500 in 20 years.

How is Donovan doing this year?

 

[CusefanATL]

sorry but those are not facts. they are merely your speculation. try not to confuse the 2.

really?

 

[longtimefan]

"Also Duke beat Louisville today by explicitly playing zone."

so you're saying it is possible to play both well?

If you saw Duke vs. Miami, you know they don't play man-to-man well.

 

[AZOrange]

This is a bad basketball team. Zone, M2M, can't throw it in the ocean, TOs,...take your pick. Heck, throw in injuries and recruiting. I guess you could say this is the year to try M2M because this is just not a good team (by SU standards).

If this team could shoot and defense was the sole issue, that might make more sense. But aside from Rak in the post, this team doesn't really do much of anything well. Hard to just point to defense.

44cuse

I tend to agree. We have 4 guys on the court at all times that either look timid or struggle making plays. Joseph made a few shots yes, but his play was still dumb, he'd pass up an open 20 footer, step in and shoot a 17 footer.

 

[AlpharettaCuse]

really?

If we have AO, we win the title.

If we have Fab, there is an epic showdown against Kentucky.

Those are FACTS.

How are those facts?