Sunday, February 24, 2019

Basketball: What's Your Best Stuff Against a 2-3 Zone?

Our post-season brackets are out and no surprise, we're playing a 100% zone team. At least that affords us a couple of practices to work on it. 



Collect stuff and then winnow it down.

Summary first: Understand our intent (the Main Thing)

1) Find opportunistic transition. 
2) Maintain core concepts of spacing, screening, cutting, and passing. Move the ball. 
3) Drive into gaps to Draw 2 looking to pass.
4) Screen the top of the zone (single or double).
5) High-low and low-high coordination is a key. 
6) Hunt quality shots not just the first shot. 
7) Win the boards because zones have no defined rebounder assignment. 

"Keep the main thing the main thing." Go back to Newellian "get more and better shots than our opponent." Start by developing your theory of what worked, works, and will work. Keep it simple, stupid? Choose from among your best stuff amidst core values of spacing, screening, cutting, passing, and selective dribble penetration. 

If we settle for perimeter passing and "hard 2s" our chances for success are minimal. We'll distill a few from among the choices...but simple is better. 

Beat the zone in transition. Don't settle for low quality shots but take advantage of e speed.



Zones have defined weaknesses. We're not a three-point shooting team but we can screen, pass, and cut. How can we be true to ourselves? 



Screening 101. Single ball side screen from the inside with relocation. 


Box Wham. Overload and screen the middle with option for perimeter shot for 2.  Offensive players have to read the x3 defender's choices. 


Corner pick-and-roll pressures the middle (x5 defender). 


Screen the top from the outside, bringing both posts up. 


Screen to post up. Take advantage of superior personnel/mismatches (above). 


Screening 201. MSU "X" with multiple screens to set up driver. 2 drives and 5 rolls. We're not ready to execute this yet or the MSU "Fist Down" sequence. 


The MSU (Tom Izzo) Fist Down sequence is too hard for our players to grasp and we'd likely just get a bunch of three-second calls with inadequate timing. 



"Double Middle" (could also run from Horns)...screen the top then the middle. 



Screening 201b. Multiple screens to open the middle. The concept is simple. Could we get the entry and finish? 

Driving distorts the zone. 



x5 rotates to stop baseline penetration. 


UNC illustrates this here and the elbow cutter comes into play (circled). 




Coach Daniel's video is illustrative. 

Play together using OVERLOAD. Low-high and high-low actions regularly appear, especially with OVERLOAD (below). 


Interior passing is pivotal (via FastModelSports.com)



Cutting can pressure areas of the zone...but don't force passes. We've scored with the clock continuity offense.