Does anyone have any recommended threads on running zone at D1? I’ve run almost exclusively man since I started playing but was thinking it might be worth trying to run zone at D1 so I could have a shorter bench and allow me to swing bigger in recruiting. I just signed up for a total rebuild of a new team (Colorado). When I get these type of ideas, I like to read anything that is already written on the topic so I’d appreciate any recommended reading. Anything is useful (e.g. gameplanning, specific players to target, common pitfalls). Thanks

https://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?topicID=477098

A lot of good stuff in there...

apparently i talked a lot in there - but i was still pretty new to zone at the time, and unsure about some things that are a bit clearer to me now:
- 3-2 zone is without question the best 3 point defense, both in terms of 3pta allowed and 3pt% allowed. its not a huge margin over man but its clearly the best in that 1 vector
- 2-3 zone is the best 2 point defense, both in terms of 2pt% allowed and how much you commit fouls (FTA are the most efficient form of scoring in this game, and as 2pt shots outside of fouling are garbage in this game, reducing foul shots is a big deal). 2-3 is clearly the worst 3pt defense.
- also no question man is the best rebounding scheme and you take a small to moderate hit on 2-3, with 3-2 being the worst rebounding scheme

the other stuff i said i think i mostly stand by, i think the big thing was i was unsure about how the 2-3 stacked up on 2pt defense against other things. most of these effects are relatively slight - a few % one way or another on fg% or 3pt%, those kinds of things matter a lot if you really get into analyzing stuff, but its not like it jumps off the page at you. don't expect you are going to like, hold opponents to 40% 2s on 2-3 while holding to 60% on 3-2 or something. i think sometimes the definitive nature of some of my statements misleads people into thinking the effect must be rather large. it is, but it isn't (depends on perspective i guess).

the big thing about zone is to really focus on building a set of players that is cohesive and follows good team building principles. by needing fewer guys and being able to play your stars longer, you should be able to have a more thoroughly constructed team than others, and that is your primary source of advantage. that and your stars playing longer i guess, but those go hand in hand.

good luck!

alright... i decided to not be lazy and actually skim the rest of it. i pretty much forgot about that sequence, because it was the one that came right after that was so much bigger. a couple things -

- it came out shortly after that the entire concept of averaging was wrong. there was a follow up thread, i think i started it, partially bc some ******* had hijacked the last one. also i think a couple weeks elapsed as i was so confused by something seble told me, i didn't even know how to react to it.

- every player is averaged on every shot. the whole, pg/sg, sf/pf/c in a 3-2, pg/sg, sf/pf, c in a 2-3 thing - those are formula groupings, but all five players contribute to the defense of every shot.

- basically, using 3-2 as an example - the pf/sf's ratings are converted to a defensive score using an identical formula. this means you could flip them and have no impact on defending the shot (it would impact other parts of defense in general like rebounding, but this whole averaging / combining of players is specifically about defending shots). however, on every shot, every single player contributes to that defense - so its not just like your guards matter when defending a 3. it is not clear if they are weighted, and if so, how much - but it is clear that distance from the basket is part of that formula (well, because seble said - i can't independently verify).

the above was all very confusing to me and probably everyone. here's what i took away. i could not get a straight answer on seble about weighting, and its not his fault - i think he basically said, no, its not weighted - but that doesn't mean anything. the underlying formula for how much a C is worth defensively on a 20 foot shot could just in general yield much lower values than a guard, which would basically have the effect of weighting, without it being explicitly done in the code.

my take is this - i would continue thinking about zone in general as most folks did before seble's revelation - basically, that guards mostly matter for per shots, bigs for the inside defense, and so forth. definitely be aware of which formula is used for each position, especially at the 3 (the 3 is evaluated like a guard in 2-3 and like a forward in 3-2, and that is a big part of your overall strategy). i strongly suspect when you evaluate the defense of a guard on a 20 foot shot, the outcome puts them as a lot more important than the center, and the reverse holds on a 2 foot shot. i haven't played a ton of zone but it 'felt' a lot more like the other defenses, when it comes to bigs defending bigs and guards defending guards, than i originally took seble's comment about all 5 players averaging together on every shot, to be.

i never bought into the whole 'you can have a bad defender because its zone' thing anyway, but what seble explained does make me discount that even more. sure, the guy is averaged with 4 others, but that means he's partially screwing up the defense for every single shot. people always talk about a good coach exploiting a bad defender in man, but what about a good coach hiding a bad defender in man? i suppose as a man coach, i've always felt i had the advantage there - because i was the guy putting that bad defender somewhere. kind of a digression, but related...

I think its a common misconception that you can have success with short benches in the zone. Sure, you can get to the NT that way, but every zone team that I have seen go deep in the tournament was deep. When you start getting deeper into the NT you are facing deeper teams and you will not win if you have crap on your bench.

fair comment by crabman. on one hand being 12 deep with exceptional players, its a total waste in zone (for that one season only), you are negligibly better than the same top 10 with 2 walkons, and only slightly better than a strong top 8 with 2 ok freshman and 2 walkons *if and only if you coach them optimally*, which is a totally different situation than the press - so obviously the general principle of needing less is true. however, your 6-8 men still matter a lot, and other bench players too - if not for this year, then for next or the one after that. if you run 4 walkons every year, those 6-8 guys are likely young and not that great and it hurts you, so while 4 walkons is tolerable from time to time, its not a recipe for sustained championship shots.

these differences in schemes are very important in my book, but a lot of folks do take it too far. you can win in zone with fewer stars, and less bench, there's no question - but it does get taken too far in some cases.

part of what crabman is seeing is people failing to set up their rotations right for a shorter team, which is a huge thing - its probably one of the general areas of coaching the overall community isn't very good at, i see tons of coaches who are good running a straight 10 man rotation, but struggle otherwise - and this is at all levels of play, even in the highest levels of coaching - and you only get the benefit of zone's tolerance for having 8 great players if you do the coaching part to enable that.

Lots of really good information here. Thanks y’all!!

Great post with some really helpful insights. This is what makes this forum so useful.

Posted by gillispie1 on 11/14/2019 12:44:00 PM (view original):
fair comment by crabman. on one hand being 12 deep with exceptional players, its a total waste in zone (for that one season only), you are negligibly better than the same top 10 with 2 walkons, and only slightly better than a strong top 8 with 2 ok freshman and 2 walkons *if and only if you coach them optimally*, which is a totally different situation than the press - so obviously the general principle of needing less is true. however, your 6-8 men still matter a lot, and other bench players too - if not for this year, then for next or the one after that. if you run 4 walkons every year, those 6-8 guys are likely young and not that great and it hurts you, so while 4 walkons is tolerable from time to time, its not a recipe for sustained championship shots.

these differences in schemes are very important in my book, but a lot of folks do take it too far. you can win in zone with fewer stars, and less bench, there's no question - but it does get taken too far in some cases.

part of what crabman is seeing is people failing to set up their rotations right for a shorter team, which is a huge thing - its probably one of the general areas of coaching the overall community isn't very good at, i see tons of coaches who are good running a straight 10 man rotation, but struggle otherwise - and this is at all levels of play, even in the highest levels of coaching - and you only get the benefit of zone's tolerance for having 8 great players if you do the coaching part to enable that.

I agree with everything for the most part, the part Im not sure of is the 8 great players you speak of.

Once you get to the sweet 16 and beyond, every team has a killer starting 5, so whats your edge going to be? If your edge is only having 3 viable bench options compared to a team that has 5 viable bench options....Im taking the other team all day assuming they run the correct tempo (not slowdown) to counter that bench difference.

In the talk about strengths and weaknesses, one big weakness of the zone, bigger than rebounding, is that it is really bad at producing turnovers. True for both sets of zone. So unless you’re going to play press/zone combo (like I do), you will want to account for that. With a straight zone, your defensive strategy is to repress your opponent’s FG% without fouling. You need your unit - all five guys are a unit, as gil has already pointed out - as strong as possible. You can get by with some pure offensive players getting 10-12 minutes off the bench, but make sure their offense is really worth it. At D1, it probably isn’t.

Posted by crabman26 on 11/14/2019 5:36:00 PM (view original):

Posted by gillispie1 on 11/14/2019 12:44:00 PM (view original):
fair comment by crabman. on one hand being 12 deep with exceptional players, its a total waste in zone (for that one season only), you are negligibly better than the same top 10 with 2 walkons, and only slightly better than a strong top 8 with 2 ok freshman and 2 walkons *if and only if you coach them optimally*, which is a totally different situation than the press - so obviously the general principle of needing less is true. however, your 6-8 men still matter a lot, and other bench players too - if not for this year, then for next or the one after that. if you run 4 walkons every year, those 6-8 guys are likely young and not that great and it hurts you, so while 4 walkons is tolerable from time to time, its not a recipe for sustained championship shots.

these differences in schemes are very important in my book, but a lot of folks do take it too far. you can win in zone with fewer stars, and less bench, there's no question - but it does get taken too far in some cases.

part of what crabman is seeing is people failing to set up their rotations right for a shorter team, which is a huge thing - its probably one of the general areas of coaching the overall community isn't very good at, i see tons of coaches who are good running a straight 10 man rotation, but struggle otherwise - and this is at all levels of play, even in the highest levels of coaching - and you only get the benefit of zone's tolerance for having 8 great players if you do the coaching part to enable that.

I agree with everything for the most part, the part Im not sure of is the 8 great players you speak of.

Once you get to the sweet 16 and beyond, every team has a killer starting 5, so whats your edge going to be? If your edge is only having 3 viable bench options compared to a team that has 5 viable bench options....Im taking the other team all day assuming they run the correct tempo (not slowdown) to counter that bench difference.

well, two things. first, when a bunch of teams have high end starters and quality composition, i certainly agree that depth becomes a prime area for differentiation. this is why zone struggles to compete at the highest levels of play. with similar quality of coaching, limiting to high end coaches and top 5 talent, i think zone is substantially disadvantaged. i don't think it is even theoretically possible to build zone teams as likely to win titles as the best press teams out there.

that said, i am going to push back on the every s16 team has a killer starting 5 bit - actually, its not so much that those teams don't have 5 very good players, its that exceedingly few make the most of that level of talent. the ceiling of the impact of composition and coaching is vastly understated in the collective consciousness. its not that some sweet 16 teams have substantial defects; rather, they all do. plenty of them have 5 great players, but virtually 0 leave less than substantial room for improvement over their core rotation.

zone doesn't magically lead to better composition - but i think it makes excellent composition more accessible - and that has to be the goal. the primary differentiator of top teams is not talent, and has never been in my time - its always team construction/synergy, both in terms of the players themselves and the team setup. its hard to capture, so i'll throw out a figure - if you take the average top 5 team in a world, within the set coached by high end coaches, an equally talented but optimally arranged team would be at least an 80/20 favorite, and quite possibly 90/10. so, for zone coaches, its not that their top 5 have to be better (well, a bit, but this isn't the main advantage) - its that they have to be able to do more with those 5, because they were able to be a little choosier and riskier going after those top 5. tons of s16 teams, for example, have a great back court or front court, but not both - the zone team must have both.

i actually think the best zone teams have a good depth of players - they just don't play them all. their bench players should be sophs and juniors who are ready for prime time - there's a lot more room for improvement strictly on talent there, than in the top few players. they should mostly be running 8 or so players for 95% of their minutes, but the best zone teams will have a couple solid backups playing none - so that when those players do get a backup role, they are REALLY good backups. the 4 walkon thing is really tolerable only for a season, not over the long haul - if you do it over the long haul, it means you are playing freshman and sophmores in too prominent of roles. i mean - its a fine strategy for like, low d1, building up a program, whatever - but its not a title strategy.

Posted by shoe3 on 11/14/2019 6:58:00 PM (view original):
In the talk about strengths and weaknesses, one big weakness of the zone, bigger than rebounding, is that it is really bad at producing turnovers. True for both sets of zone. So unless you’re going to play press/zone combo (like I do), you will want to account for that. With a straight zone, your defensive strategy is to repress your opponent’s FG% without fouling. You need your unit - all five guys are a unit, as gil has already pointed out - as strong as possible. You can get by with some pure offensive players getting 10-12 minutes off the bench, but make sure their offense is really worth it. At D1, it probably isn’t.

I see you are running press/zone on 2 D1 teams. Couple of questions from me:

1) What do you set you o/d training at? 20/20/20? I’m generally a 24/24 guy but even dropping to 20 across the board feels like a substantial investment. This seems especially true on a rebuilding team where deep potential players are extra valuable. Maybe the smart move is starting with just zone and adding press when I get my prestige up. Thoughts?

2) I randomly clicked on a few of your UConn games and saw all 3-2 even when playing paint focused teams (indicated my your negative defense). I assume that is because you need you 3 to have speed for TO purposes and that lends better to 3-2. Am I right in that?

3) You run flex across the board. Any specific advantage to that in this setting?

Posted by texashick on 11/15/2019 2:38:00 AM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 11/14/2019 6:58:00 PM (view original):
In the talk about strengths and weaknesses, one big weakness of the zone, bigger than rebounding, is that it is really bad at producing turnovers. True for both sets of zone. So unless you’re going to play press/zone combo (like I do), you will want to account for that. With a straight zone, your defensive strategy is to repress your opponent’s FG% without fouling. You need your unit - all five guys are a unit, as gil has already pointed out - as strong as possible. You can get by with some pure offensive players getting 10-12 minutes off the bench, but make sure their offense is really worth it. At D1, it probably isn’t.

I see you are running press/zone on 2 D1 teams. Couple of questions from me:

1) What do you set you o/d training at? 20/20/20? I’m generally a 24/24 guy but even dropping to 20 across the board feels like a substantial investment. This seems especially true on a rebuilding team where deep potential players are extra valuable. Maybe the smart move is starting with just zone and adding press when I get my prestige up. Thoughts?

2) I randomly clicked on a few of your UConn games and saw all 3-2 even when playing paint focused teams (indicated my your negative defense). I assume that is because you need you 3 to have speed for TO purposes and that lends better to 3-2. Am I right in that?

3) You run flex across the board. Any specific advantage to that in this setting?

I run press/zone for all my teams now. I like flex with press/3-2 best, but the D3 is still a triangle.

1) I use 20 for offense and zone, 10 for press. So 50 total in sets.

2) That’s part of it. 2 other reasons I lean 3-2. The biggest is that most opponents get a fairly high percentage of their scoring from guards, so even if they’re not shooting a lot of 3s, I still want a strong perimeter defense. I’ll just move them in to -3 through -5 (I default at -2 with 3-2 base). The other thing, which is true for UConn, is that with flex, I want more perimeter scoring, so I am more likely to have a guard type 3. My own personnel is a big factor, but not always the primary concern. With Kansas, the team is probably best suited to 2-3 given personnel, but I will still likely be playing 3-2 >80% of the time just because of how rarely I am up against a team that gets most of its scoring from forwards and centers.

3) Like I said, I like the perimeter focused flex offense with a 3-2 base (and HCpress for tov, as you say).

Very helpful thank you!!

Once upon a time, it was said that in the 2-3 zone the averaging was the 1+2, the 3+4 but the 5 was treated alone for defensive purposes

Is that view now obsolete - instead an overall, sort of weighted averaging?