Posted by fatchance on 2/8/2015 4:06:00 AM (view original):
I hear what you are saying slyman and i am mostly in agreement with you. However if many of our best players are leaving 2 to 3 years into the program the optimization of the press seems a pipe dream. So then we are stuck with the option of typically having slightly lower iqs since the press appears to develop slower than man or zone defense or sacrifice minutes given to core skills to have the press iqs equal to our opponent's iqs. One of the issues i have run into with my GT team is even when i have a strong starting unit of say 1 senior, 3 juniors and a sophomore is the ath/spd/stamina and bh/pass along with similar or superior iq of say a man or zone led opponent can negate the press' effectiveness. I have attempted to counter balance these issues with higher stamina recruits, superior ft shooters, increased iq mins and carrying 11-12 scholarship players(even if that meant the 11th and/or 12th player was inferior to my regular recruits). And while i have had success in building competitive teams, i just wonder if combining the zone with the press may allow superior gameplanning and flexibility in year to year recruiting needs.
If i decide to pursue this endeavor it will go down as a silly against the grain flop or potentially a wild success. I can't help but envision the opportunities a partially zone educated team could afford me in terms of stamina issues, double teams, element of difficulty game planning against and recruit quality over quantity situations. Thank you for everyone's thoughts thus far, will continue to consider my options.
i run zone OR press over at kansas in tark, occasionally mixing in some hcp. 95% of the time its straight zone or straight press though, not to exclude playing some of both in the same season depending on the situation.
its an interesting experiment. kansas is extremely hit or miss in recruiting, i can go 4 seasons without a single elite guard in range (like right now), or i can get a handful of elite players over a few seasons that nobody else can really mess with me on (like a half dozen seasons ago). i pretty much struggled for the first half dozen seasons, i've played mostly zone TBH, which i am new to, plus i was rebuilding and wrapping my head around running 2 sets (its a first for me). in the beginning i had too little into IQ, now i have like 57 minutes into team practice, which restricts the recruits i can pursue even further... but still, that screwed me overly solidly until i figured it out. i did have a 5 season stretch with 4 title games and 2 titles, one running zone and one running press. the 4 seasons since then though, i have basically had crappy recruits and/or sucked at recruiting, and failed to do anything (although i probably would have done nothing with just zone or just press anyway, except maybe this season). so its been pretty hit or miss, but a lot of that is the nature of recruiting at kansas.
the upside is that i rarely can guarantee the rotation of a press, and those seasons would have been somewhat disasterous without the zone. the downside is im traditionally a 25m team practice guy and i certainly miss the IQ. i very possible would have won an additional title say running straight press or straight zone for that matter, based on IQ, on the seasons i came close, but i'd almost certainly have lost the title i won with the set i would have to give up. its an interesting experiment, i certainly won't say its the optimal way to go, i think somewhere with a broader range of recruits would be better. but i will say its definitely interesting and can definitely work quite well. i am still learning the zone and suspect just simply having better knowledge of the zone would have given me a 50/50 shot at winning one of those title games i lost (when i foolishly, in retrospect, ran press). so i will say i definitely have not optimized this zone or press system but still having some good success with it, i think its definitely a viable option. optimal? probably not - in a typical year, if you run press, or zone, your team would have been better if you focused on that set. but it does keep things interesting, no doubt about that.
2/9/2015 10:28 AM (edited)