I also wonder this after watching Real Life Syracuse play.......has anyone ever won consistently playing zone? It seems the teams with superior athletes run press or man and just dominate teams........can you dominate with superior athletes running zone? I've notice when coaches take over a zone sim team, the first thing they do is start working IQ's toward man or press.

It's only D3 mind you, but I've had a pretty successful run with Hamline using superior athletes in a zone. I've sacrificed somewhat on speed (though no real slugs in the backcourt) in favor of athleticism for the zone with good results so far. No idea how that might translate to other levels.

zbrent, is ath > spd in a zone? I've run a zone because a lot of the guys I find that fit my offense don't have great def ratings, but I've always preferred elite speed in my guards over athleticism

Posted by pjbrankin on 1/3/2011 1:28:00 PM (view original):
zbrent, is ath > spd in a zone? I've run a zone because a lot of the guys I find that fit my offense don't have great def ratings, but I've always preferred elite speed in my guards over athleticism

According to conventional wisdom, no. In guards, SPD > ATH. In bigs, ATH > SPD.

But I'm not much for conventional wisdom.

i've had a pretty consistent success running zone - one NT championship and a couple of near misses.  I run zone in DII with my other ID as well, albeit with slightly less success but I'm always in postseason play there too.

i agree with zbrent - ATH even in guards tends to help, but the guards can't be slugs either.  and BLK is VERY important for your bigs, even more important than DEF.

There was another discussion on this topic a couple of weeks ago.  Someone tracked the last few D1 champs and found that by far most of them played either Press or Man.

Now, granted, it could also be that most of the tournament teams play those defenses anyway, but the consensus was that it was really a matter of personal taste and personnel.

 

With the new engine, I've found that DEF ratings are much more important (than they were) in order to have a consistent defense in the zone.

Thanks for the input guys. I'm really interested and may change one of teams over or add another team already established with zone IQ's.