jncuse
I brought the Cocaine to the White House
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2012
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Teams put 4 shooters on the floor back in 2012. Heck, they did it in 2010. Kenpom noted a statistically significant trend of the Syracuse zone causing teams to shoot poorly from deep back then. No m2m defensive scheme could match it year in and year out.
Basketball hasn’t changed that much, imo.
That said, flexibility would be nice. And we need prototypical Cuse players at every position. Long, athletic, etc. If we have a weak link, we pay. We have about 2.5, maybe 3, weak links on this roster.
The zone defense is m2m defense that switches everything, essentially. There are some notable m2m defenses out there that switch almost everything. They tend to look like zone a lot of the time.
I think part of the reason it worked in 2009-2014, was that we had the athletes and length to provide floor coverage such that we forced longer threes, a few feet behind the line, without giving up much inside That is what likely caused the rate to be lower. We could adapt the zone to move it in/out as needed.
We just don't have that coverage anymore, at the top or back. We don't want to stretch our players to far out because we don't have the back end support.
And also its not only that more people shoot 3's now, its that players can shoot threes more effectively a few feet behind the line at this point.
Better personnel could certainly help us be a better zone in 2023. Just not sure if it can be exclusively run in 2023.