Let's Talk Some Zone
Volume 16: The Idaho Basketball Coaching Podcast Newsletter
📑 The Playbook
🤔 Thought Starter from Steven Soderbergh
⛹🏾 Development: 1v1 in the Key
📝 LoveNotes: To Zone, Or Not To
📓 Defense: Zone Rules From Colby Blaine
🎧 IBCP Archives: David Lepisto
🎼 The Playlist: Rabbit
🤔 Thought Starter from Steven Soderbergh
“I need a pocket of fear to keep me alert. … You need that sense that this could go sideways if I don’t execute at the best of my ability. You’ve got to find this balance of being self-critical without being paralyzed. You have to make decisions, but you’ve also got to be willing to say to yourself: ‘That can be better. It has to be better.’”
— Steven Soderbergh, film and tv director
⛹🏾 Development: 1v1 in the Key
Here’s a very simple warm-up drill we use for development. Offensive player starts from the free throw line and looks to finish around the basket. It’s a turnover if the offensive player dribbles or steps outside the key.
The scoring system is the key for what we were focusing on. The offensive player gets 1 point for strong hand finish or outside shot (you can use the smile), while they get 3 points for an off-hand finish. Defensive player gets 1 point for a stop. You could play to 7 or another number depending on time.
We might do 3 sessions of this, with players having to switch partners each session.
📍 A Constraints-Led Approach Tip from Philip O’Callaghan: “… the environment should rarely be fully representative. Instead we use scaling to create slices of the game for the players to explore.”
📝 LoveNotes: To Zone, Or Not To Zone
A mentor coach has told me this story a few times. I still love hearing it.
The story goes something like this … He was at a coaching clinic that included Jim Boeheim and Bob Huggins taking questions from primarily high school coaches. Of course, a coach asked Boeheim about his 2-3 zone defense.
After Boeheim explained some of the principles of the zone defense, Huggins started to diagram a 2-3 zone while telling the coaches they needed to remember something important about Boeheim’s success with the defense.
This is what your 2-3 zone defense will look like.
This is what Boeheim’s 2-3 will look like.
Boeheim is now retired. In an article last month by CJ Moore from The Athletic, the longtime Syracuse coach said if he were to start a new program he knows exactly which defense he would run.
“Man-to-man,” he responds in the article that questions whether or not zone defenses can still work in college basketball. “Just too many good shooters. Too many coaches that know how to attack zones. I would try to play almost 90 percent man, but I’d like to have a good enough zone to play 10-20 percent.”
According to the Synergy stats used in the article, college teams are zoning less. Seventy teams played at least one-third of their possessions in a zone during the 2015-16 season. The number dropped to a total of 15 teams last season.
Some of the reasons identified why coaches are using zone defense less, include the increase and improvement in outside shooting, the resulting spacing the outside shooting has caused, and the tactics coaches are using to attack zones.
We almost exclusively ran a 2-3 zone up until two seasons ago. We’ve almost exclusively run man-to-man in the half court since then. (We run a zone press that falls back into man-to-man.)
Our “Bulldog” zone worked well for us and was something we were known for. It was aggressive with the guards usually picking up at half court and the back line usually starting around the free throw line. It was based on a lot of man-to-man principals, and ultimately it was a matchup zone. But the better teams figured out ways to attack it. Figuring it out usually meant the team had at least 2 really good shooters and moved the ball well enough to get us to chase it around.
Now we are man-to-man team that incorporates some zone principles. I decided to make the change after losing in the state semifinals three years ago. I felt we would have a better chance to compete against the top teams playing a man-to-man defense. Idaho’s high school rules at the time — no shot clock — could make it hard to fight back when down late in a game against good teams.
Idaho’s entering the shot-clock error, however. We also have different personal. These factors have me thinking about running some zone defenses along with our man-to-man next season. I will admit, having multiple attacks on defense is something I should have incorporated in the past.
New Syracuse head coach Adrian Autry was Boeheim’s assistant for 12 years. Zone will still be used, but Autry admits that the outside shooting ability of players and modern spacing concepts means it’s time for Syracuse to change.
“When those guys are so extended because guys can shoot so far, it just opens the court up,” Autry said in the CJ Moore article. “When they get in the middle part of your zone, you wind up playing playing three-on-three, but three-on-three with someone kind of coming down in rotation, so they’ve got a little bit of advantage.”
Autry said the Orange will probably still zone about 30 percent of the time. According to the article, Syracuse was one of only 7 programs that played zone more than 70 percent of the time. (I included Oakland which finished at 69.5 percent.) What’s your ratio of man vs. zone?
❓ Your Turn: What factors cause you to run a man defense vs. a zone defense in a matchup against a particular team? Leave your response below.
📓 Defense: Zone Tips From Colby Blaine
“… With Jim Boeheim gone you might be the best zone couch in the country now.”
— Chris Oliver talking about College of Idaho head coach Colby Blaine
If you have not had a chance, check out Episode 276 of The Basketball Podcast. The episode features national champion head coach Colby Blaine from the College of Idaho.
There are a ton of takeaways from the episode that can help your program (Have your notebook ready!) but here’s 3 basic rule from Coach Blaine on CofI’s match-up zone defense.
Rule No. 1: Never have 2 defenders guarding the ball
Rule No. 2: Always bump the wings
Rule No. 3: Players yell “Match” when the ball goes to the high post and each defender touches the defender they are matched up with
❓ Coaching Question: What are some of the critical rules in the zone defense you run in your program? Leave your response below.
🎧 IBCP Archives: David Lepisto
I’ve learned so much from David Lepisto. He’s had a huge impact on my career and what we do in my program! (I know several coaches can say the same thing.)
In this podcast, Lepisto talks about the “Circle of Offense” and the evolution of the offensive concepts he has used as an assistant coach and now a head coach at his Wisconsin high school.
🎼 The Playlist: Rabbit
“If you’re an artist (or coach*) who feels stuck, never forget to devour EVERYTHING. Be a scavenger. Be uncomfortable. You never know what will rewire you forever.
- Trevor Powers
* Note: I added “or coach”
These are not lyrics from a song, but a recent tweet from the person behind the band Youth Lagoon, about finding inspiration — something coaches need sometimes.
The Boise-based Trevor Powers just released a new album, Heaven is a Junkyard, his first as Youth Lagoon since 2015. Shout out to an IDAHO musician!!
As a decade-long listener of Youth Lagoon, it made me excited when I learned about Powers’ latest album. Lots of great music here for coaches digging deep into film or planning for the season ahead, but I’ve been listening to the song Rabbit quite a bit the last couple of weeks.
