swellafelon wrote:
As I understand Georgia Tech plays a lot of zone defense. I don't recall us facing a lot of zone this year.
Does anybody recall how we looked against a zone, and how we attacked it?
We were 4-0 against Illinois State and Bradley, the two MVC teams that play a lot of zone. I don't think we have a lot of trouble with 2-3 or 3-2 zones (remember how frightened we were of zones several years ago?), but the 1-3-1 is more tricky. The usual way of breaking a zone is a lob pass to a (tall) player near the FT line, which causes the zone to collapse on a player, which opens someone on the perimeter to shoot or drive. The 1-3-1 packs the center of the court, which discourages passes to the high post with the possibility of trapping. This dares teams to pass out of the high post to corner shooters, but GT has wrinkles and modifications on their 1-3-1 that adapts for that. They also gamble more on steal attempts than most zone defenses are set up for.
I think the senior leadership of Krutwig and Wiliamson (plus Clemons, Uguak and Hall) gives us a lot of experience to counter zones. The ACC loses so many players early in their career to the pros, and the sophomore and junior starters don't have as much experience as they do in non-power conferences. Maybe that's why Syracuse always seems to do well.
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