Hi! I’m starting a rebuild and want to begin recruiting for the 2-3 zone. (I’m running the 3-2 this year because that’s what I have the personnel for). I understand the role of guards and center in the 2-3, but am unclear about what ratings matter for the SF and PF.

Is this like real life, where the SF and PF should be versatile and have high SPD, ATH, DEF, and REB ratings? Or are the SF and PF camping out in the post and SPD is a secondary concern?

i would highly advise a brand new coach and a d3 team do not run zone as your first defense you are just setting yourself up for disappointment

but more 2nd than 1st but thats not really the best way to think about it because they arent camping out as thats not how the enginge works necessarily but you need ath/reb/def/sb more than speed for sure.

Thank you! So they will somewhat factor into perimeter defense? 2-3 sounds hard at the D-3 level if only because you need a legit SF which is the hardest to find at this level. I want to take the challenge ??

I think of myself as new-ish. I’ve played five seasons with good success (with other peoples rosters). My last time playing over a year ago, I ran zone and loved the versatility but mostly played 3-2 at a heavy negative.

If you're committing to zone, the benefit of it is its flexibility. You can easily switch between 2-3 and 3-2 depending on the opponent you're facing. Really the biggest difference is needing a shot blocking center in the 2-3. If I play a team that's always in a 2-3 then I'm shooting (and making) a ton of 3s.

Posted by JayGarneau on 11/17/2023 10:48:00 AM (view original):
If you're committing to zone, the benefit of it is its flexibility. You can easily switch between 2-3 and 3-2 depending on the opponent you're facing. Really the biggest difference is needing a shot blocking center in the 2-3. If I play a team that's always in a 2-3 then I'm shooting (and making) a ton of 3s.

This isn't the best way to play zone defense. Typically, most coaches just run one defense because your best 2-3 SF is not the same type of player as your 3-2 SF. The best coaches running zone choose 3-2 (oldresorter as far as I know, cedarberry as examples).

Posted by upsetcity on 11/17/2023 12:47:00 PM (view original):

Posted by JayGarneau on 11/17/2023 10:48:00 AM (view original):
If you're committing to zone, the benefit of it is its flexibility. You can easily switch between 2-3 and 3-2 depending on the opponent you're facing. Really the biggest difference is needing a shot blocking center in the 2-3. If I play a team that's always in a 2-3 then I'm shooting (and making) a ton of 3s.

This isn't the best way to play zone defense. Typically, most coaches just run one defense because your best 2-3 SF is not the same type of player as your 3-2 SF. The best coaches running zone choose 3-2 (oldresorter as far as I know, cedarberry as examples).

I actually vary mine more than some might think.

my last 35 game season, 19 3-2, 16 2-3 at Colorado.

I pick mostly based on gut. I feel there are 3-4 near equivalent game plans I can use with zone, some of which might appear quite different. Then I go with intuition to pick. I have my own advanced stats package, much like real colleges use to help hone my picks, but in the end, I pick, not using a math formula or anything.

I’ve been in the same conf a long time, you’d have to ask those guys, do they know what’s coming game to game? Since I don’t, my guess is they don’t either?

i have a zone rebuild team Jacksonville state, 27-3 last yr, 17 3-2 and 13 2-3.

On the other issue, personnel:

I never look at my sf as special because of zone or any other reason. i simply start my best 5 or the 5 that fit my system. Now I have a system for subbing, for selecting starters by position, for assigning usage or shot %, or shot levels, that I think works for me, etc, etc. but it’s the same whether I play man or zone or fcp or motion or triangle or flex. By system I have maybe 20 custom ratings I use, including my 2-3 pg formulas, 2-3 sgs formulas, etc, etc, as well as defensive guards, bigs, and a handful of more general ones. I use different formulas for recruiting than I do for picking my lineups.

but none of these change for my defense or offense types.

I pick pg first always, then c, then sg, then everyone else. I sometimes end up with excellent SFs cause my teams are often very good, but pg, c, sg imo are the 3 positions that specific skills really matter that I select first. If you look, most nt title teams, 8-12 guys are really great players, so many of them excel anywhere. But to win with less, really important to get right players in the right roles.

hope that helps. I saw my name mentioned, thought I’d expand with some thought, thx for the shoutout to upset city,appreciate the mention.

Posted by oldresorter on 11/17/2023 6:09:00 PM (view original):

Posted by upsetcity on 11/17/2023 12:47:00 PM (view original):

Posted by JayGarneau on 11/17/2023 10:48:00 AM (view original):
If you're committing to zone, the benefit of it is its flexibility. You can easily switch between 2-3 and 3-2 depending on the opponent you're facing. Really the biggest difference is needing a shot blocking center in the 2-3. If I play a team that's always in a 2-3 then I'm shooting (and making) a ton of 3s.

This isn't the best way to play zone defense. Typically, most coaches just run one defense because your best 2-3 SF is not the same type of player as your 3-2 SF. The best coaches running zone choose 3-2 (oldresorter as far as I know, cedarberry as examples).

I actually vary mine more than some might think.

my last 35 game season, 19 3-2, 16 2-3 at Colorado.

I pick mostly based on gut. I feel there are 3-4 near equivalent game plans I can use with zone, some of which might appear quite different. Then I go with intuition to pick. I have my own advanced stats package, much like real colleges use to help hone my picks, but in the end, I pick, not using a math formula or anything.

I’ve been in the same conf a long time, you’d have to ask those guys, do they know what’s coming game to game? Since I don’t, my guess is they don’t either?

i have a zone rebuild team Jacksonville state, 27-3 last yr, 17 3-2 and 13 2-3.

On the other issue, personnel:

I never look at my sf as special because of zone or any other reason. i simply start my best 5 or the 5 that fit my system. Now I have a system for subbing, for selecting starters by position, for assigning usage or shot %, or shot levels, that I think works for me, etc, etc. but it’s the same whether I play man or zone or fcp or motion or triangle or flex. By system I have maybe 20 custom ratings I use, including my 2-3 pg formulas, 2-3 sgs formulas, etc, etc, as well as defensive guards, bigs, and a handful of more general ones. I use different formulas for recruiting than I do for picking my lineups.

but none of these change for my defense or offense types.

I pick pg first always, then c, then sg, then everyone else. I sometimes end up with excellent SFs cause my teams are often very good, but pg, c, sg imo are the 3 positions that specific skills really matter that I select first. If you look, most nt title teams, 8-12 guys are really great players, so many of them excel anywhere. But to win with less, really important to get right players in the right roles.

hope that helps. I saw my name mentioned, thought I’d expand with some thought, thx for the shoutout to upset city,appreciate the mention.

LOL I wrote "as far as I know" cause I picked like 5 random games this season for you (including the NC, congrats!) and all were 3-2. I'm *fairly* certain cedar is mostly 3-2.

Thanks for the clarification. I was close to copy/pasting some of r0pey's thoughts on zone in here but your insight is awesome.

I’ve been playing Zone at Ohio forever and just can’t seem to make the 2-3 work for me, even with this years team which would appear to have the perfect 2-3 Center: excellent athlete, great defender, great shot blocker (especially for the MAC). If I play a team that scores a lot inside I’ll just play the 3-2 anyway but adjust the negative value to -3 or more.

i think the ability to switch from 3-2 and 2-3 is one of the best things about zone. not all zone teams handle it well, but generally, i would be pretty unhappy with a zone team if i didn't feel confident playing both ways. its not like it takes that much to be able to do so either, every position in every set is really def/ath driven defensively for the most part. a SF who was really fast with poor ath/def would be a substantial liability no matter what, but it is worse in 2-3, but otherwise not much reason you can't do both.

on the sf/pf helping defend per shots question... all 5 players help defend every shot. if you read the hoops 101 part it talks about zone hiding a bad defender, which i guess sort of makes sense, but i look at it as the opposite. you can't target a bad defender like you might in m2m, but you also can't hide one like you can in m2m (by putting him at a position where both starter / backup have low scoring). among good teams and good coaches, like not elite level even just top half of the NT or something, i am definitely more open to having a weak defender anywhere than zone. zone guarantees he's hurting you on every defensive play he's on the floor for, and with zone being the weakest possession game wise (turnover generation, rebounds), you really can't afford anything less than staunch fg/3pt defense.

the entire mantra of zone IMO is to have high talent at all positions, especially defensively, and to be able to accomplish this because you don't need 11-12 players like press to function well. good SF-type players i think are really good in zone, the well rounded guys who can defend any shot well, because they are all defending every shot. the part B of this being the ability to switch from 3-2 to 2-3 to really punish teams who are lopsided on offense, or to make it really tough for the opposing team in one of those areas, for the tough, late-NT type opponents who do both things well. 3-2 is the best system in the game for defending 3s and long 2s, and the 2-3 is the best in the game for defending inside. in 3.0, so many less teams are both highly talented and really well rounded, which i think makes this aspect of zone particularly relevant in today's game.

Gillepsie, that’s incredibly helpful!! I’ll think about creating a team with a preferred “base” defense, but with enough positional flexibility to punish a one-dimensional (but talented) team.

I tried zone on a few teams for a total of about 40-50 seasons. I really studied it and tried to make it work, but it was very frustrating. No matter how talented my team was, I struggled to get past the 2nd round of the NT. On the other hand, there's a lot of really great coaches that make it work, so it seems to be a problem with me haha.

The main problem that I found is the deficit in possessions that zone creates. This sim really boils down to 3 things. Possessions advantage (rebounds, turnovers), offensive efficiency, and defensive efficiency. You want to have more possessions than your opponent while scoring more efficiently than them. When using zone, you're already at a disadvantage for rebounds and turnovers. You need to have a really efficient offense and defense to win games. And then it takes a lot of experience to know how to plan an effective defense for any given game (2/3, 3/2, positioning, double teams, etc).

It just takes a lot more work than press defense (innate turnover advantage) or M2M defense (innate rebound advantage), but it can do done.

I play the 3-2 90% of the time.

I only play the 2-3 when: I play a team that takes less than 5% of their shots at 3FG or I only have 4 guards.

To answer the original question, I treat the SF just like PF in the 2-3. Defensively, I value DEF-ATH-BLK on that order. I rank ATH pretty close to BLK for defense.

Billys advise is always sound but his opinions on zone are influenced by (IMO) being a great recruiter. For us mere mortals, being able to build a great 2-3 AND 3-2 team is really difficult. I would pick one.