With our big guy lineup and a zone defense I believe we can stop the layup drill we consistently give up. Make them do it from behind the three point line. Several teams are doing both, driving and threes, with our man defense.
Switch to a zone defense, at least occasionally?
- Thread starter RexShepcat
- Start date
You’re preaching to the choir. Which ain’t gonna do you no good here. Cal is the guy you’ve gotta convince.
Good luck with that.
Good luck with that.
Cal thinks you have to run one type of defense in order to win, for whatever reason. Makes absolutely no sense, unless running man all game is working. Guess what, Cal? It's not. So instead of cramming the square peg into the round hole, try different shit defensively like K did in 2015 with that Duke team that was also bad defensively until the tournament. Change.
lol. There’s a better chance of a supermodel who loves me for me showing up on front step with a million dollars and a trip to the Caymans.
*ding dong*. Wonder who that could be….?
*ding dong*. Wonder who that could be….?
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I'm not sure if Calipari knows how to spell "Zone'
I must have missed that in the game itself. Would have been a great time to practice a zone in game when we were up almost 30 points with just under 10:00 to go. Hard to imagine our zone being bad enough that they would outscore us by almost 20 points during that span.
I would feel so much more confident with this team if they had anyone as head coach other than cal.
A zone defense would makes us a worse rebounding team than we are. Also, the young guys would struggle with the assignments of a zone. Its not as simple as "ok guys, switch we are playing zone". Good teams, specifically ones with really good guards, can and will penetrate the hell out of a zone. If not, they will make you pay dearly by splashing 3s
We need to stick to man, it does need to have a lot more effort of staying in front of your guy and being a little more aggressive in using hands in the passing lands, but our bigs have got to do a better job cleaning up at the rim. And yes it is there job to rim protect, not a guard alive who will not get beat off the dribble. But quit going for every shot fake. (The primary defender needs to stop also). Look at it like this, what would happen if teams zoned us ? These guys are young, never had to play defense until now, they where always told to save energy for the offensive end, they will get better. But having a team like ours scoring so much and so quick, the opposing teams get more possessions and thus will score more. What are the shooting % we give up, that will be the key tell sign. If we are averaging 92 points a game, well yes we will give up 75 or 80. It's a hell of a lot better then averaging 75 a game and giving up only 65. Yes it looks better in the boxscore, but it is just less possessions. Remember, the more possessions in a game, it benefits the better team and less chance of a upset because usually the weaker team is not capable of gaudy numbers. Lower scoring games give weaker teams a shot. So zone would just turn it into a Big 10 type rock fight.
Now maybe a trapping or pressing defense could be put in to help. Not full court or all game.
Do we really want to switch to a zone and slow these gazelles we have into playing half court, grind it out rock fights ?
We need to stick to man, it does need to have a lot more effort of staying in front of your guy and being a little more aggressive in using hands in the passing lands, but our bigs have got to do a better job cleaning up at the rim. And yes it is there job to rim protect, not a guard alive who will not get beat off the dribble. But quit going for every shot fake. (The primary defender needs to stop also). Look at it like this, what would happen if teams zoned us ? These guys are young, never had to play defense until now, they where always told to save energy for the offensive end, they will get better. But having a team like ours scoring so much and so quick, the opposing teams get more possessions and thus will score more. What are the shooting % we give up, that will be the key tell sign. If we are averaging 92 points a game, well yes we will give up 75 or 80. It's a hell of a lot better then averaging 75 a game and giving up only 65. Yes it looks better in the boxscore, but it is just less possessions. Remember, the more possessions in a game, it benefits the better team and less chance of a upset because usually the weaker team is not capable of gaudy numbers. Lower scoring games give weaker teams a shot. So zone would just turn it into a Big 10 type rock fight.
Now maybe a trapping or pressing defense could be put in to help. Not full court or all game.
Do we really want to switch to a zone and slow these gazelles we have into playing half court, grind it out rock fights ?
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There is no argument for us to become a zoning team, rather switch to a zone on occasion when we are getting slashed defensively. Switching to a zone for 4-5 trips on occasion, if nothing else, can throw off the opponents rhythm they had established in getting great looks against the man to man defense. It’s all about keeping the opponent off balance. Also we rebounded much better last game with only giving up 4 offensive boards.
I would rather switch to a more aggressive style and use a trap or press defense to switch it up. All a zone does is slow the game down. That is exactly what we do NOT want. All a zone does is try to mask a very bad , maybe undersized defensive team. When you have the athletes and depth we have, you use the athletic talent and speed not slow the game down play zone. Good guards will destroy a zone either by penetrating or over the top. At least man, a guy is responsible for his man, zone they are responsible for an area. It would make a young player be a even worse defender and rebounder. Zones are for teams that can't keep up, not for teams built like ours. It's the effort and attention to detail that needs to worked on, not switching defense. If they can't play man, how do you expect them to be able to play zone ? They would be even more lost.
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Y’all are obsessed with a defense made for out of shape unathletic church league guys.
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Well clearly we don’t have the roster for man-to-man. What would you suggest?
We damn sure don't have a roster to run a freaking zone defense. If they can't stay with their man how TF are they going to in a zone? A zone you just guard an area and rotate with the ball swings. Good guards will exploit a good zone, and absolutely wreck an inexperienced zone. Now, we could trap and press to help the weaker defenders. Also the rim protectors need to do just that, clean up the mistakes and protect the rim when a guy gets beat. They need to stop going for every shot fake. The very last thing you want to do with a very deep, super athletic, explosive, lethal shooting team like we have is to slow the game down and lower the number of possessions by playing zone. We average 92 points a game, yes we will give up 75 or 80. Do you really want to limit this teams offensive power by turning a game into a Big10 rock fight ? So you would rather us zone teams and make them use shot clock and limit possessions so that we will only give up 65 per game ? Guess what that does, it takes our 92 per game down to about 75. Weaker teams have a better chance to win by limiting the number of possessions per game the better team gets. Lower scoring. Better chance to win as the weaker team is not capable or built to score 90 . It's almost like you want Stoops to come over to the basketball team and play the play clock game and run the ball 60% of the time because the other team has the better athletes and skill position guys. It's the opposite, we want to have as many possessions as possible, we are the better, more athletic, skilled team. Keep scoring 92 per game, tougher forthe other team to try and keep up then it is to slow it down and give them a chance.
Please Cal zone the under our basket inbound plays!!!
Cal plays one D and that man its very odd that a coach in a major BB program will never play a zone.
Go to a good Pizzeria and order you a "Calzone," thats the closest you'll get a zone to our coach, but seriously he did say earlier in the year he wanted to play a zone with the 3 7 footers in. I would love to see a junk defense with Big Z on top and another 7 footer in the paint and the other 3 have at it.
Go Cats!
Go Cats!
Do the same shit over and over that doesn't work, apparently.
We play defense like a bunch of unathletic church league guys.
Seriously though, even switching back and forth a few times makes offenses waste a few seconds changing their sets.
And FWIW, claiming that rebounding would be worse with a zone is a falsehood. Good teachers of zone defense focus on finding a man and boxing out when the shot goes up. That's more than we do in man to man already.
Out of bounds underneath will cost this team if it doesn’t get fixed. For some reason this is a weakness every year.
Combination of poor defensive fundamentals (i.e. coaching) and lack of discipline by younger players (and older players sometimes!)
Defense isn't easy. You've got to want to stay between your man and the basket.
Funny how for years when another team zoned us we looked completely out of synch for multiple possessions. But we ourselves cannot ever zone as other teams would destroy us even more. Thank you for proving that all other teams are much better coached ball teams than our own.
As deep as our bench is I don't know why we don't at least press some to get some turnovers. If we can't stop them in a half court set then hopefully you can cause them to turnover the ball and limit their possessions.
Free calzones every time Cal plays a zone this year. Which pizza place wants to latch onto that gimmick.
Reasonable minds can differ on a subject….I tend to think that 50% of the sport is playing defense and letting the other team preemptively know you refuse to play any way other straight man to man is strategically terrible and gives them a huge advantage. Basketball is also a game of runs and having different defenses for a strategic possession of two seems prudent. However, I watch the game tape a lot and Dillingham can’t figure out switches to save his life. Edwards can’t properly identify his man in defensive transition and close out to save his life. And Wagner won’t stop over rotating crashing into the paint unnecessarily giving up easy open shots on ball reversal. They can’t be much worse at zone?
TL;DR WOT Learn to use paragraphs. Brevity is the soul of wit. Diarrhea of the mouth is nasty.
I would suggest greatly slowing the pace down. If we win 72-63 no one complains. If we win 105-96 it’s “embarrassing” and the sky is falling.
Going back a few years I think it was 2014 we were playing Uconn in the final four and their guards were just killing us in our man defense, Uconn ended up winning and we had no zone in our arsenal to try. And I had just watched Lousiville beat them a week or so earlier in their Conference tournament using a zone defense that was the key to the game. Looks like one would have worked on this a little bit after watching Louisville shut them down with a zone just in case it was needed. The stakes were pretty high and a championship on the line that we should've and could've have had. And is one of the three championships that we let slip by when we had the best players of any of the teams.
You contradict yourself ! Playing a zone-trap full-court press for the entire game would not "slow these gazelles", but would, rather, increase the pace of play exponentially -- which, of course, plays right into the hands of our "gazelles" - not to mention our depth of gazelles ! A well-coached zone-trap full-court press would blow every game open in the first 10 minutes. Nobody has an equal combination of depth and speed as the present version of our U.K. 'Cats ! The way any thinking coach optimizes that depth-and-speed advantage is with a zone-trap full-court press. But then ... we have a lead weight chained to our ankles in the person of CCC sitting in the head coach's chair. Alas.
Just MHO, of course. Go 'Cats ! ! !
Good Guards can also destroy a pressing defense. But I do like the idea of switching defenses a little too. Man-to-man the vast majority of time, and a zone or press to shake things up when the defense is getting abused or gambling is necessary.
But a pressing defense is a gambling defense, as is a zone (maybe to a lesser degree). You’re gambling on your opponent making mistakes, because if they don’t you can get cooked. And with more players who can pass and handle the ball being on the floor these days, I believe most coaches think using a press as your primary defense would be too much of a gamble (hence why we don’t see it much); and with the ever-improving 3pt. shooting, using a zone as a primary defense could be a disaster as well - especially given how teams seem to shoot the 3 against UK.
But again, using these defenses to get things off the snide from time to time feels like a good idea (whether or not it truly is, I don’t know).
According to this board, we haven’t had a roster for man to man any year in the Cal era.
