{"id":64,"date":"2009-02-03T14:16:47","date_gmt":"2009-02-03T19:16:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/for-the-frustrated-coaches-that-turn-to-zone-defense\/"},"modified":"2009-04-03T12:27:15","modified_gmt":"2009-04-03T17:27:15","slug":"for-the-frustrated-coaches-that-turn-to-zone-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/for-the-frustrated-coaches-that-turn-to-zone-defense\/","title":{"rendered":"For The Frustrated Coaches That Turn to Zone Defense"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article is meant for coaches at all levels, especially youth, junior high, and junior varsity.<\/p>\n

If you have ever gotten frustrated with your man to man defense and decided to use zone because it was easier to implement, I had an experience early in my coaching career where being persistent with the fundamentals and using the long-term approach paid off.<\/p>\n

When I was a senior in college, I had an accounting internship close to my hometown and decided to become an assistant coach for the freshmen basketball team at my former high school.\u00a0 I was an assistant to my Dad.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the beginning of the season, he had gotten frustrated because he couldn\u2019t get the kids to play man to man defense<\/a> and decided to go play some zone. Haven\u2019t we all been there?<\/p>\n

At the beginning of the season, we played a team called Marion from Iowa that was quite talented. We got trounced by something like 67-22. The funny thing is that it could\u2019ve been much worse.<\/p>\n

So my dad and I met, because we wanted to figure out what was best for the team.\u00a0 We decided when we modified our short-term and long-term plans that we would always ask ourselves…<\/p>\n

What can we do to prepare this team for the varsity level?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Who cares about wins and losses, how much we get beat by,\u00a0and what any of the parents and spectators think.\u00a0 What can we do to make this team better in the long-run?<\/p>\n

We knew that we had to focus on man to man defense and fundamentals of the game.\u00a0 We also had to spend time TEACHING the game rather than\u00a0just running tons of drills. \u00a0<\/p>\n

We knew even if they wanted to play zone at the varsity level, they needed to have these fundamentals pounded into them in order to be successful.<\/p>\n

There’s a saying that goes “If you can’t play man, you can’t play zone.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some coaches believe that they can hide poor defenders within a zone. Sometimes, this is true, but when you face a quality opponent, they will exploit your poor defensive players.\u00a0 Also,\u00a0a zone isn’t very effective if you can’t stop the ball.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So, we knew that man to man defense was the right way to go.<\/p>\n

Day to day we saw little improvements and all of the sudden those little improvements turned into a huge improvement over the season.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, it comes to the end of the season and guess who we get to face. The same undefeated Marion team that smoked us by 45 points at the beginning of the year. This was a totally different game.\u00a0 We were staying between the man and the hoop when playing the ball, communicating, rotating on defense, and forcing low-percentage shots.<\/p>\n

All of the sudden, it\u2019s the 4th quarter and we\u2019re winning by 2 points!! Unfortunately, some balls didn\u2019t roll our way and we ended up losing by 4 points. It was like 46 \u2013 42 or something like that.<\/p>\n

When I was riding home, I just got goosebumps all over, because it felt so good to see that team which had such little confidence at the beginning of the year learn that they could compete with anybody by playing the right way.<\/p>\n

Four years later, the same group of kids\u00a0ended up beating that same Marion team for the first time<\/u>! I believe Marion was ranked 6th in the state at the time.<\/p>\n

Was part of that rooted back to when we pounded the fundamentals in them when they were Freshmen? I like to think so.<\/p>\n

Stay persistent and focus on the fundamentals of the game.<\/strong> It may not pay off today. It may not pay off this season. It may not pay off next year, but it will pay off in the long-run.<\/p>\n

If you would like to learn more about defense and how to build your defense from the ground up, take a look at our Man to Man Defense System<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article is meant for coaches at all levels, especially youth, junior high, and junior varsity. If you have ever gotten frustrated with your man to man defense and decided to use zone because it was easier to implement, I had an experience early in my coaching career where being persistent with the fundamentals and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,29,16],"tags":[32],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}