Attacking the Zone

I watched the game with my wife last night. She has taken to watching the games the last couple years and is starting to get to know more stuff, especially since I talk constantly through the game citing what they are doing poorly or well. She made the observation that our perimeter guys looked reluctant and confused by the Baylor defense. I explaind that Baylor was playing a zone. That was the first time she had seen the zone so extensively. I expained that the guys, while a little reluctant to be aggressive at times, were by and large doing the smart thing. With the collapsing zone that Baylor plays and the athletic bigs they have to collaps, driving the ball is risky. Setting baseline screens is a good option as is skip passing or swinging the ball to the high post and spreading the weak side for a possible oprn shot, a high post shot or ahigh post screen. We did not do these things with perfect efficiency for most of the game or even with great efficiency. But the thing that encouraged me is we never went rogue. We kept pounding away with our sets and playing to the game plan. Then in the last 5 or 6 minutes it all came together and the demons were exorcised from Graham, Selden and LUcas and we simply dominated with KU basketball. A very satisfying win. What really gave me a goo contrast is that after the game I was doing my usual database management while sort of watching the UNLV/Boise St. game. It was such a contrast to see the ad hoc offense and the individual players going rogue and trying things that seemed to me to be clearly outside the sets (if indeed they had sets). Then I thought back of the discipline the Jayhawks play with to the game plan. While not perfect, clearly better than any other team in the country. Actually I caught a game a while back that was an impressive disciplined team in Dayton. Not as telented but obviously well coached.

Good observations. The key to attacking a zone is to find ways to penetrate, which causes it to collapse and THEN decide if you can exploit the inside position you've gotten through penetration, OR using that collapse to kick out to the open space on the outside created by the collapse.

If you just try hucking from outside, you'd better make your shots, and probably won't because you haven't collapsed anything in the first place. Likewise, if you try to drive or pass inside, without any threat of hitting shots, you'll find yourself in the trees with nowhere to go.

Inevitably against a zone, you need to find a seam to exploit, which almost always results in the "collapse" of 2 or sometimes 3 players. As we all know, if you've got 2 (or 3) guys on you, there's somebody open.

So to your point, I agree that the guys struggled with it last night. Early on, it seemed that they were having trouble penetrating. Nevertheless, they stayed patient. Was I happy that they had so many 30 second calls against them? Of course not. Nevertheless, they played MENTALLY tough, stuck to the gameplan, and it all worked out.

Favorite play of the night: Svi drives deep into the paint to the baseline, tosses an excellent pass to the corner where there's an open shot. Corner sees that the wing is MORE open and chucks the extra pass for an easy 3. I may have screwed up some details on this, but whole thing took about 3 seconds, and was a perfect example of how to attack the zone. Svi got the zone to totally collapsed it, leaving multiple wide open shots available on the perimeter with Baylor unable to react in time to recover.

Driving against Baylor's collapsing zone is tricky since the collapsing part is designed to specifically stop the drive. So the best way to attack the Baylor zone is baseline screens or high post options. I was actually kind of hoping we didn't see Mason and Graham attacking and getting swatted away. I wanted them to attack but not unless it was a clear seam.

That was also my favorite play of the night. Svi could have forced up a contested lay-up attempt but instead made the correct play to throw opposite vs. the 1-3-1 zone. Then that player made the extra pass for the wide open 3. I thought that was a possession that showed the players were prepared and understood how to attack the zone.

I thought there were many other possessions that they looked great in attacking but Lucas would not be aggressive once that diagonal pass was made to him. He played great down the stretch but did not look comfortable in the short corner position. I thought he could have one dribbled hard to the hoop and either scored or dumped off to the opposite block, but you could tell this was not in his comfort zone.

Overall a great win. Baylor played great defensively and we stuck with the game plan and earned a hard fought win.

Good stuff from both of you guys. Your point about the 3 is spot on. Without it, there's no need to extend and move as much on defense. At one point, we all, I'm sure, noticed Lucas pass up a wide open 10' shot from along the baseline (likely due to his lack of confidence). The announcer said that with one dribble and a jump he'd be at the rim (true), but it's a prefect example of the how the defense can and will react if you fail to keep them honest by hitting shots.

I agree that Landon can get more comfortable offensively. We just do not see a lot of 1-3-1 zone where he is asked to be a play maker with the ball in his hands, nor do we want him to most of the time. I thought he did well the other night in that he didn't try to do what he was uncomfortable doing. He took care of the ball and made the safe plays. With the shooting ability of this team, the safe play is often times the right play.