Box and 1 Offense: 3 Easy Options

Two broad ways to approach basketball are overwhelming fundamental excellence or multifaceted approaches including trickery. I belong to the Church of Whatever Works, but we don't have the kind of talent demanding other teams play junk defenses.

When teams employ a Box and 1, what options might you have? As coaches we're looking for 'solutions' and players do best when they have the answers on these "open book" tests. Here are three possible approaches. They're not the be-all, end-all, just ideas. Ideally, they are not major departures from your basic zone offense principles. 

We have to recognize that most teams aren't running junk defenses that often and their execution may be flawed because of that limited experience. 

3 is the STAR. This is extremely simple as it's just an overload with cut through. It relies on limited expertise from the help side. 

This capitalizes on the weak center of the box. Screens behind the front of the zone must be timed with the wing cutting into the middle for the pass.

This set modifies Tom Izzo's MSU "Down". Instead of the 4 screening the middle of the 2-3 zone defender, she screens the STAR defender.