Historically, my offenses have been very good, usually near the top of every conference I'm in.

I think I subconsciously tend to recruit better offensive players and less good defensive players. I guess I buy into the offensive sizzle a bit more than the "boring" yet dependable defensive player.

Perhaps I'm a bit better at game-planning offensively as well.

I'm continually stuck in the B or B+ prestige range and doubt I'll be able to command the 5 Star players that are dominant in both phases.

• The question is, should I switch to zone?
• Who is really doing well with a zone?
• How many of the A- prestige and greater DI teams are running zone?

EDIT: I also seem to sacrifice rebounding when recruiting.

Would this be a double disadvantage in zone, or not hurt me as much because zone already gets outrebounded?
I get outrebounded most of the time playing man, but I generally shoot a higher percentage from the field than my opponents do.
I also tend to commit more fouls and my opponents most of the time outscore me at the free-throw line.

1. I did, and cant comment further
2. shoe3, cedarberry
3. shoe3, cedarberry

roguedog / stanford / crum is a good one too.

i don't know that moving to zone is really going to help you here. offensive sizzle teams are a no-no in zone IMO. you have to be great at everything - you just have to be, zone has too big of built-in disadvantages in the possession game (weaker rebounding and TOs is not offset by increased blocking). if you are running a solid but not great reb/def zone team, that is great on offense, i just don't see how that is going to work better than in m2m. are you also struggling with depth? i find 10 guys in d1 to be enough to have pretty great m2m teams.

edit: although getting over the b/b+ hump i suppose is a different game. because all 5 players defend every shot, you can get away with a more unbalanced team on an individual defense basis. you still need really solid defense though. defense is not less important in zone - it may be even more important because of the built in disadvantages. but i definitely think zone in general is a good set for getting past that b/b+ hump. you just may need to change your recruiting approach, too. i think a+ programs should aspire to take as few walkons as possible, in general (without sweating them much either) - but on a b/b+, i would actually make sure i'm getting them. only take an 11th player if you are thrilled with all your players. you just have to find a way to raise the bar on talent, to fight for those quality 4 stars or whatever and be able to win a couple who can lead the team of slanted but solid players.

Arfy says zone is suicide. Haha.

I don’t play D1 but prefer M2M. If I have a weak spot on defense up against an opponent’s offensive power player, I usually try and adjust my depth chart to avoid the mismatch.

Playing M2M, the goal is no weak defenders as starters. No weak defenders period, the dream.

arfy is a great coach but he's mostly a d2/d3 coach. i would agree with such comment on a d2/d3 basis, but d1 is a different story. press is vastly less widely used in high d1 than high d2/d3. getting to 12 consistently has always been hardest in d1, and with EEs only having session 2 replacements, high d1 is played with meaningfully less depth. i am not a high d1 zone fan - i think zone is good for a lot of situations but not really for title seeking. but it definitely is viable in 3.0's d1.

Zone by itself is hard to go deep into the NT IMO, but HCP/zone has become a favorite defensive scheme of mine lately. I've taken 3 seperate teams to a NT championship and lost all 3 times. Once with M2m, once with FCP and once with HCP/zone. My favorite to play is HCP/Zone because of the ability to swithch from 3-2 to 2-3 and press. Also this allows for me to press if i get lucky in recruiting and have a full 12 man roster. if i miss and have 10 the hcp/zone will work just fine.

Posted by Nick_Bennett on 12/16/2020 12:49:00 PM (view original):
Zone by itself is hard to go deep into the NT IMO, but HCP/zone has become a favorite defensive scheme of mine lately. I've taken 3 seperate teams to a NT championship and lost all 3 times. Once with M2m, once with FCP and once with HCP/zone. My favorite to play is HCP/Zone because of the ability to swithch from 3-2 to 2-3 and press. Also this allows for me to press if i get lucky in recruiting and have a full 12 man roster. if i miss and have 10 the hcp/zone will work just fine.

I always felt that playing a combo defense meant I'd never be really great at either one.

I put 25 minutes into defensive practice. That gets everyone to A+ in their senior seasons. What are you putting into each? Where do your player IQs max out?

I've always felt that devilowl14 is THE best zone coach in HD. Not sure how many teams (if any) that he has with zone now. But that guy is a beast zone coach

He ran some zone at D2 Philadelphia fairly recently in Smith CAC (at the time, my vote for the best D2 conference in HD). And then he ran zone at Mount Olive in D2 Crum. But that's been a while

Posted by vegaskevin on 12/16/2020 12:59:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Nick_Bennett on 12/16/2020 12:49:00 PM (view original):
Zone by itself is hard to go deep into the NT IMO, but HCP/zone has become a favorite defensive scheme of mine lately. I've taken 3 seperate teams to a NT championship and lost all 3 times. Once with M2m, once with FCP and once with HCP/zone. My favorite to play is HCP/Zone because of the ability to swithch from 3-2 to 2-3 and press. Also this allows for me to press if i get lucky in recruiting and have a full 12 man roster. if i miss and have 10 the hcp/zone will work just fine.

I always felt that playing a combo defense meant I'd never be really great at either one.

I put 25 minutes into defensive practice. That gets everyone to A+ in their senior seasons. What are you putting into each? Where do your player IQs max out?

All of my upperclassmen are A- or better in both. I usually go 17 on each set including offense. I believe B+ or better IQ is enough to play some real quality ball and having the ability to mix it up on D can be very valuable come tourny time.

You want your worst players just not to hurt you. That means good reb/de. I really don't like guys like Iva Demski on your Wooden team at all. All of your team ATH is terrible. You have no one to stop other teams' top scorers! In a man, having a couple plus defenders (ideally at least 1 big and 1 guard) is pretty useful.

Posted by cubcub113 on 12/16/2020 1:28:00 PM (view original):
You want your worst players just not to hurt you. That means good reb/de. I really don't like guys like Iva Demski on your Wooden team at all. All of your team ATH is terrible. You have no one to stop other teams' top scorers! In a man, having a couple plus defenders (ideally at least 1 big and 1 guard) is pretty useful.

Yeah, Demski sucks.

Sometimes I struggle with leaving an opening and signing a guy I can redshirt that I think will be a serviceable backup. Too bad he ends up starting because of later recruiting fails.

IDK if my old mantra of "always have someone redshirted" is viable anymore.

Of course, it depends on who he is and who else is on your team. I need to shift the decision point towards having more money to recruit the next season and away from signing someone just to redshirt him and have as back up for his jr/sr seasons.

Posted by gillispie1 on 12/16/2020 12:25:00 PM (view original):
arfy is a great coach but he's mostly a d2/d3 coach. i would agree with such comment on a d2/d3 basis, but d1 is a different story. press is vastly less widely used in high d1 than high d2/d3. getting to 12 consistently has always been hardest in d1, and with EEs only having session 2 replacements, high d1 is played with meaningfully less depth. i am not a high d1 zone fan - i think zone is good for a lot of situations but not really for title seeking. but it definitely is viable in 3.0's d1.

The roster/personnel advantages of zone have less payoff in D2 and D3 for sure, since filling a roster with competent players is generally not a problem at those levels for experienced coaches. So Arfy’s comment is not off base at all, especially considering a straight zone. It’s certainly still possible to win with zone, you just need a good plan and good execution - press allows for much more room for error, as long as you fill that roster.

I’ll be sticking with the HCP/zone at D1 for the foreseeable future. I am convinced that 10m practice I use for the HCP is a very valuable way to get back in the possessions game with a zone base, and to manage my early entry level talent, and to keep my roster fluid and flexible so I’m rarely recruiting from a position of pure need. But I am moving to a straight press at D2 starting this season. I do have a couple D2 titles with combo, but I think I’ve given up a couple good title shots (including this season) and probably $100+ credits at the D2 level in the past 2 RL years by not just running straight press in Knight. I hate that this is still where the game is, but unfortunately that’s what I’m seeing.

Posted by Nick_Bennett on 12/16/2020 1:17:00 PM (view original):

Posted by vegaskevin on 12/16/2020 12:59:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Nick_Bennett on 12/16/2020 12:49:00 PM (view original):
Zone by itself is hard to go deep into the NT IMO, but HCP/zone has become a favorite defensive scheme of mine lately. I've taken 3 seperate teams to a NT championship and lost all 3 times. Once with M2m, once with FCP and once with HCP/zone. My favorite to play is HCP/Zone because of the ability to swithch from 3-2 to 2-3 and press. Also this allows for me to press if i get lucky in recruiting and have a full 12 man roster. if i miss and have 10 the hcp/zone will work just fine.

I always felt that playing a combo defense meant I'd never be really great at either one.

I put 25 minutes into defensive practice. That gets everyone to A+ in their senior seasons. What are you putting into each? Where do your player IQs max out?

All of my upperclassmen are A- or better in both. I usually go 17 on each set including offense. I believe B+ or better IQ is enough to play some real quality ball and having the ability to mix it up on D can be very valuable come tourny time.

I take a different approach. I focus heavily (22-23) on the base sets - so offense and zone. Press just gets 10. I don’t worry too much about what the press IQ looks like for HCP, I look more at how many turnovers I’m forcing. If I’m in line with what good man teams are getting, that’s where I want it. My teams usually end up around 16-17 forced TOV/game. Straight zone teams generally don’t get much better than 12, unless they have really dynamite guards, but even then I don’t see them in the 16/g range.

Posted by shoe3 on 12/16/2020 1:52:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Nick_Bennett on 12/16/2020 1:17:00 PM (view original):

Posted by vegaskevin on 12/16/2020 12:59:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Nick_Bennett on 12/16/2020 12:49:00 PM (view original):
Zone by itself is hard to go deep into the NT IMO, but HCP/zone has become a favorite defensive scheme of mine lately. I've taken 3 seperate teams to a NT championship and lost all 3 times. Once with M2m, once with FCP and once with HCP/zone. My favorite to play is HCP/Zone because of the ability to swithch from 3-2 to 2-3 and press. Also this allows for me to press if i get lucky in recruiting and have a full 12 man roster. if i miss and have 10 the hcp/zone will work just fine.

I always felt that playing a combo defense meant I'd never be really great at either one.

I put 25 minutes into defensive practice. That gets everyone to A+ in their senior seasons. What are you putting into each? Where do your player IQs max out?

All of my upperclassmen are A- or better in both. I usually go 17 on each set including offense. I believe B+ or better IQ is enough to play some real quality ball and having the ability to mix it up on D can be very valuable come tourny time.

I take a different approach. I focus heavily (22-23) on the base sets - so offense and zone. Press just gets 10. I don’t worry too much about what the press IQ looks like for HCP, I look more at how many turnovers I’m forcing. If I’m in line with what good man teams are getting, that’s where I want it. My teams usually end up around 16-17 forced TOV/game. Straight zone teams generally don’t get much better than 12, unless they have really dynamite guards, but even then I don’t see them in the 16/g range.

Shoe i like that approach. Mine is different because i want to run FCP but just cant get a full roster of 12 so i hedge with the zone. If i get lucky in cruiting expect the fcp to come out more.