Can u win a D1 championship running a zone? Had a pretty monster team and just mediocre results.. 3-2 zone Flex. Hopefully can get some advice

So I think it is certainly possible, because that’s what I like to run. I’ve got three thoughts on your Red Raiders this season.

1. Lacking elite perimeter shooting, Aleman was your only high end shooting option. He should of seen more minutes and more 3pt attempts (total, not as a percentage of shots) . Even then flex is hard with only one perimeter threat and Aleman is likely to get some double teams. Get a few shooters. Also 20-21% of your shots being 3pts is too low. Makes it easy for teams to drop inside against you. Which leads to...
2. Teams are playing you in minus positioning and slow down (which eliminates your superior depth for the most part). Looking at the Kansas loss in the CT, you lost the 3pt battle and they played -2 M2M so you lost the rebound battle. Zone is weak at rebounding (like +1.5 against man and +1 against press) so you need good rebounding ratings yes but you also need to be able to get your positioning to give you a slight help, against as -2 M2M, you probably want to be -4 3-2 to counter that but then that’s not an ideal way to guard the 3 so that’s why you want your offense to force them to play farther away from the rim. If they play you 0 M2M and you sit in a -2 3-2 then I like your chances much better.
3. It took me a while to accept this but with zone you need to take advantage of switching between 3-2 and 2-3. UConn in the NT game was not going to punish you from 3-pt land so I probably would have doubled Vincent (their one 3pt threat) and sat in a 2-3. This would have defended 3-pt attempts (and percentage a little), 2-pt percentage a lot, and put you in a spot to equal rebounds.

Hope this helps and gives you some stuff to think about. You definitely have the players to be able to switch between 2-3 and 3-2 and make a run in the tournament.

Appreciate the time you took! I’m gonna screen shot this so I can revert back to it thru the year!

In an objectively humble brag-y sentence, I just lost the championship game last night with a HCP/zone team so yes it's certainly possible. I agree with everything bpielcmc wrote but to hit on a few more things and emphasize a couple more.

- The zone is by far the worst rebounding defense (esp in 3-2) so you have to make up for that in a couple ways. The first (and obvious one) being rosters really need alot of high quality rebounders. Your team as a TON of elite D1 talent, but the glaring weakness is rebounding so that compounds the problem.
- Post defense in the zone relies the most heavily on shot-blocking from both post spots (and SF in a 2-3) so it really does need to be a focus in recruiting. Your team has no shotblockers which really hurts. One nice thing is since it's so much less important in press and man, its often easier to recruit for since there is lower demand. It's also nice you run flex which means you can have less emphasis on LP and focus more on REB and SB.
- To be successful in a zone at D1, you have to have a player that can play 3-2 SF (think 70spd with 60 BH/pass and 40 reb) and 2-3 SF (think 55spd, 60 reb, 60 sb). These dont have to be the same player, but you do need to switch back and forth depending on how many threes the other team is shooting.
- If you are going to play pure zone, you dont need a full 12 man roster. You've got a roster full of studs, but its just hard to get them all on the court enough to justify. Use some of that recruiting capital to upgrade the post position a bit.
- I REALLY like the adding half court press (HCP) to zone at high D1. The added steals really make up the limitations in rebounding. That, layered on with the FGA% advantage having both a 3-2 and 2-3 zone give you, is a really fun way to play HD. If you have a full roster, you can also sneak in a FCP occasionally again the people trying to run 8 man rotations and run them of the court. That said, you dont need a full roster as 10 is plenty for HCP/zone. Also with a roster full of studs like you have, putting more minutes in the team O/D categories can help you retain your early entry type players. FWIW, with the amount of speed your team has, they would have been a great HCP/zone team.

Posted by Indianajoinz on 8/11/2022 12:57:00 PM (view original):
Appreciate the time you took! I’m gonna screen shot this so I can revert back to it thru the year!

There’s also a star in a little blue box, which will make this an easy go-to for you, it will come up under the “My Forums” tab.

I really advocate a lot of what Tex said. I’ve got titles at all 3 levels playing zone/HCP, and it’s a ton of fun. Folks tend to think you give up too much development time, but especially at D1 recruiting elite players, you don’t want them all leaving as sophs anyway; and you only need a passable IQ to get away with an HCP. 10 minutes is enough to get freshmen to the brink of B-, sophs to B/B+, jrs to B+/A-, and srs to A-/A, depending on what they come in with and we/pt/smarts. That’s enough to be a formidable turnover creating machine by the second year. Good for an extra ~3-4 per game, I figure, depending on how mature the team is and how successful recruiting has gone. So if you like to recruit full rosters, and want to keep the zone, I always recommend at least thinking about throwing in a little HCP to go along with it.

Thank y’all. I’m to the point where I can make the tournament but I need to learn how to compete once I get there! Thanks for all the advice!

one of the best ways to deal with these things is to find a really strong program or two you can keep an eye on over time. this is one for you - piman's UCLA in tark, fantastic program. he has zone and press IQ, but he tends to run straight zone or straight press depending on the team he's got that year. the zone teams are great despite the practice time hit from the press IQ. so not necessarily every team is going to be zone but they are all built with zone in mind (presumably) and he does a really nice job with it. he hits the 3-2 hard to dominate the 3pt scoring, which is the flavor of zone i was personally most a fan of. i really like the 2-3 -1 or -2 against the lopsided teams, but against the top crust of competition, 3pt scoring is usually one of the big battlefields, so i tend to lean 3-2 in that space.

but anyway, i'd look at how he runs some of these teams. be warned his in-season lineup is always growth oriented, but they are still plenty difficult teams to beat no matter how many freshman he's starting, there's still plenty to glean. i think his defense is exceptional and the use of rebounding wings goes a long way.

https://www.whatifsports.com/hd/TeamProfile/Ratings.aspx?tid=11825

i am on board with all the prior advice as well, its quite good. i don't think you have to mix in press, but its an option. it sounds to me like you have a decent amount to improve with straight zone, so i personally would start there. i am not much of a zone/hcp fan, but it wouldn't be fair to mention that without remarking that zone stubbornly is the only set keeping me from multiple titles in every set, and i have lost all (at least a few) straight zone title games, while the only zone/hcp team i had a deep run with, did win it all. i don't put much stock in that personally, but, it is true. and i enjoyed playing zone OR press greatly, it was one of my favorite schemes of all time for A+ d1, but this was 2.0, and i more enjoyed it than thought it was great. i dropped it for not being meta when my priority shifted from goofing off to winning a 3peat at any price, but it was still a really good and more importantly, super interesting scheme. i would not recommend it outside the top of d1 though due to the practice hit, really only being justifiable from a success standpoint, with really high end recruiting going on.

I agree with gill. I started straight press on my OU team with the intention to switch to zone after the rebuild was complete. It's a somewhat easy transition because you can run the zone/hcp combo for a few seasons while you switch. But honestly having the option really helped me in the postseason. I won an NT game with a 2/3 zone against a team that didn't shoot many 3's and then went fcp against a team with 8 scholarship players. The versatility can be really nice.

joinz - check out my CSU program in Iba and lmk if you have any questions. we run triangle/zone (usually 3-2, but i will flex into 2-3). i don't think there is a true secret sauce to what we're doing so i'm happy to answer any questions.

to me, zone was attractive at the D1 level as a mid-major because you can get away with running a shorter lineup. i knew i couldn't match the top high-baseline programs in terms of top-to-bottom roster talent, but i knew if we could put a better starting five out there, with the zone conserving our stamina, we'd have a shot.

and it paid off - i brought home my first d1 ship two seasons ago and we're currently in the final four

How do y’all like to position your 3-2 zone against an above average 3 point shooting team? Wouldn’t a +1 get u killed on the boards?

Posted by Indianajoinz on 8/28/2022 2:39:00 AM (view original):
How do y’all like to position your 3-2 zone against an above average 3 point shooting team? Wouldn’t a +1 get u killed on the boards?

So I went back and checked through my UNM game logs this season and the only time I can find myself using +1 or farther out is against other zone teams, I think you could maybe get away with it against a poor rebounding press team as well. But yeah never against M2M. I really want to win the battle on the boards every time, so I am typically hedging against above-average 3-point teams because sitting in the 3-2 will automatically suppress 3-pt shooting, yet I'll sit as deep as I think is necessary to still win the boards.

Additionally, what do you mean by an above-average 3-point shooting team? Because I define it as the percentage of 3-pt shots out of total shots. I consider 30-35% the average range. I do not care about 3-point efficiency or PE (plus BH and SP) talent. My general philosophy is I want the best defense on the most number of shots possible. So if a team only shoots 5 3-pt shots a game, even if they always hit them all, I am gonna lean towards having better defense on the other 55 shots or so. This leads to a very limited number of opportunities for 3-2 +1 or greater.

In a vacuum, for a 37% 3-pt shooting team, I will be in a 3-2 at -2/-1 against M2M, -1/0 against Press (got to be careful with the foul battle here as well), and 0/+1 against Zone. Then adjust for relative rebounding skill, other coach positioning preferences (here it is convenient that the SIM AI will always start at 0), and potential doubleteaming strategy. Hope that helps.

Posted by Indianajoinz on 8/28/2022 2:39:00 AM (view original):
How do y’all like to position your 3-2 zone against an above average 3 point shooting team? Wouldn’t a +1 get u killed on the boards?

i don't think so, i mean it depends. 3-2 is the worst set on the boards, and every + you take is going to make it a little bit worse. its really valuable for 3-2 oriented teams to prioritize rebounding in their wings because it really helps makes the 3-2 +1 type stuff more viable.

i generally don't go above a 3-2 +1 or so myself, i mean i haven't played zone much in like 7 years, but i feel like a 3-2 +1 is pretty severe already, kind of like a m2m +2.5 or so. i see some other really good coaches crank out 3-2 +2 and +3 though. its certainly viable.

i do think its important for a strategy to be slanted - if i am running 3-2, i generally am doing it because i want to win the 3pt battle. i used 3-2 -2 as my sort of baseline if you will, but i was adjusting that into a 2-3 or a 3-2 -1 or 0 regularly, because i generally don't go for a balanced defense. i want to be better at something and worse at something. i guess i did play a lot of 3-2 -2 when it was a balanced opponent 3pt wise especially with a bunch of mid range per shots.

but anyway, i mean, the shift in rebounding from like a 3-2 -1 to a 3-2 +1 is not going to be massive. if the path to victory for the other team runs through 3s, its often going to be a good call. but i definitely try to prioritize rebounding heavily in zone, not just from the 4/5, so that i am more comfortable running the 3-2. and really, the possession battle is important to everyone, if you aren't winning that battle on TOs via press, then rebounding is your path.

it definitely matters if you are the better team or not, a better team is more likely to be in a position where the only significant path to victory for the opponent is 3s. better teams should be playing the 3-2 +1 +2 type stuff more than average ones.

I play almost exclusively 3-2 with my experienced zone combo teams (UConn and Minny). Both have pretty weak rebounding on paper, just because I tend to recruit only 3-4 true frontcourt players for those teams (sometimes some big swings to cover though). The gophers are a little ahead in rebounding 22 games in with a #10 SOS, and UConn is 2+ boards ahead going into the Sweet 16 tonight. I do it much like gil describes, default to ~-1.5 and try to play good rebounding 3s when I can get them (UConn has an ideal one playing 3 this year) but I very rarely go +1 or above. I’m not looking at being the better team, I’m only looking at what I think my opponent can realistically do against me. And I’m rarely worried about an opponent hitting a significant amount of 3pt shots at better than 35% rate against the perimeter defenses I can usually field with these two teams - though minny is down a little this season in that regard. My thinking is if I am setting up a 3-2 out at +1 or +2, I am forcing them inside. If I’m playing the best perimeter defense in the game, and I have great perimeter defenders… why would I want to do that? When I’m playing *against* 3-2 defenses, often what I’m trying to do is drill down low with whatever LP scoring I have. Now sometimes there is an opponent with a slew of elite shooters, and very little LP option, and then I do seriously consider a + defense. It’s rare though.

I don’t really play negative for the rebounding, but it’s a small help. I play negative because the 3-2 is naturally set up to defend well against perimeter threats, especially when I have good defenders out there. So playing negative helps put my defense in position to protect a vulnerable area.