Lute Olson 1-1-3 Zone Defense

How did you choose to defend ballside and weakside cuts? And you switched all screens?

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I'm looking for a 2-3/matchup zone. This has concepts that I may borrow, but my team has been running a (too passive) 2-3 zone ... I don't want to change the alignment, but want to add more aggressive on-ball and/or trapping elements to it (i.e., on the wing pass, the 2/3 can trap the wing, with 1 denying the pass back out top, 5 moving up to deny the high post and 4 sliding over to deny/front the low post). I'm not looking to run a "trap" everytime, but maybe stay relatively passive and then spring a trap once in a while to keep the offense off-balanced. Any thoughts/leads/ideas would be appreciated. Thanks.

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Sounds to me like Al Marshall's 2-3 Zone is almost exactly what you're looking for:
http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/pr/marshall-zone-defense.html

They are aggressive, but they don't give up lay ups. They trap at the right time, cause turn overs, yet they are smart and don't give up easy shots or lay ups. It's a smart, aggressive, and tough 2-3 defense. With that said, he does not have 1 deny on the reversal when trapped. I think you'll find the way they trap and use high hands, they get turnovers without getting out of position. In my opinion, it's a better way to trap and cause turnovers.

By the way, how old are the players you are working with?

Hope this helps.

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Great concept. I like this as an alternative to the typical 2-3 zone or 1-2-2. It looks like an excellent change of pace.

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Jeff: thanks! I looked at your link to the DVD this morning (it came in the same email as the 1-1-3 zone), and based on the description (and your recommendation) I will definitely order it. (I have practice tonight - we practice just once/week during the fall - and was at this point just hoping to introduce the concepts. So I''ll try to find something else to drill them with tonight, and will take a look at Coach Marshall''s DVD as soon as I get it). BTW - I have a 7th grade boys and 5th grade girls team (they''re an advanced AAU team ... we were exclusively man2man until this summer when I introduced a zone to deal with foul/short bench situations). Thanks again.

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Blake, when the cut was to the ball side inside of the 3-point line, we just had our defender that was already there step in front of the offensive player and deny the pass. If the offensive player bounced out to the 3-point line, we let them go.

For weakside cuts, we just had our team talk and let each other know where the cutter was going. As long as our weakside was aware of where the offense was, it didn't seem to pose any problems.

However, you may have to make adjustments based on what the offense is doing.

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I like this zone because I can quickly go from the 2-3 to this one and back in a flash. I also will throw in a trap in the corners as well, instead of having my wing player try to sprint back to their zone, cuz I can see some players getting confused with having to run away from the ball at the middle school level.

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Jeff, is this the amoeba defense?

What variations do you have for full court using the same formation?

How would you drill your players to master this zone?

Thanks

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Ivan, this is not the Amoeba defense. I have never extended this defense full court, but let me know if you try it and how it works.

As for the drills, we just separated the guards and forwards on different sides of the court and passed the ball along the perimeter to get them rotating to their spots.

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hey coach, first time to ask a ?
what do you recommend against a 1high (guard)-4 low (across baseline) offense.
I have been using a m2m defense but would like to try something different and thought of the 1-1-3.
Can I have your opinion.
Thanking you in advance
High School Varsity

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Leonard -

I always felt like the biggest key was to get the ball off the MIDDLE LINE... once you get the ball to one side, your help defense is established. That solves a lot of problems....

Here is something that we did when I was the sophomore coach before moving up as head varsity coach.... again, forcing the ball to one side... one team loved to do this and once we got them off the middle they wanted to take the ball towards one corner - our rules were simple then... if they dribbled towards another player who stayed there, we trapped the ball.... that stopped any continuity that they wanted to do. They stopped running the 1-4 low after we did that.

I never ran the 1-1-3 vs this set so I couldn't tell you IF it would work or not... I used this D vs a team that had 2 good baseline shooters and a good post player with some good results. We stopped the 3 point shooters but had a hard time keeping the ball out of the post because our players were not big... tallest was 6' - so you can see that problem.

When you play the team that uses the 1-4 low, look at what they want to do, or do best with it.... then take that away from them - force them to do something else, make some other player beat you.... like I always said, " Pick your own poison. "

I hope this helps.

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You can run Ameoba in the 1/4 court as well, not always extended. The main difference is trapping the wings & rotation on corner passes. On corner passes, the ball side wing drops to front post instead of running to the backside. The backside defender defends lob & skip instead of rotating to ballside block. I think the Ameoba rotation is better for corner passes. It gets more deflections & steals and ensures you get a defender fronting the post. Just my opinion though.

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Coach, what does the defense look like against an overload?

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this is a great defense to run to try and confuse people you can make it look like a lot of things there really isnt a hole in it and also the trap in the corners is deadily when you run it right.

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Run what you are comfortable with just like other coaches will run what they do best.....just try to be positive.

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At the freshmen girls level we taught the 2-3 zone. First time ever I went we any zone as my main defense. After teaching the 2-3 zone I then set them in what we called a 1-1 high and 1-1 low.

On the 1-1 high we placed our fastest defender at the top, she picked up the ball at half court and then pushed the other team's ball handler to the off hand side (usually the left). The second defender was on the three point line. Basically, the 1-1 low was this same set as pictured here..

To simplify we told our girls all the same rules applied for these sets as in the 2-3 zone. It was our 2-3 zone but with these looks. Sometimes the top defender would release the ball-handler once they crossed one side but we wanted them to stay and the other guard take the other zone as in the 2-3.

I was amazed at how many coaches and teams had no idea what we were playing for a defense and how easy it was to change up during a game with limited practice time. I had several coaches ask us "what is that defense called" and I thought it's just a simply 2-3 zone principle with a little change on the guard positioning. Of course I said it's called "Black" which is one of our school colors.

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How to attack this type of zone?

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Josh says: 12/8/2020 at 1:48:54 PM You would attack it just like a 2-3, make sure you have the short corner and high post filled on ball side. In the illustration, if the wing defenders lift that much short corner should always be open. Once short corner catches, the high post would cut down the lane line to the rim. Like     login   register

We ran the 1-1-3 matchup look in at Crestview High School. I'm sure you can easily find him, but I think Coach John Kimble is an absolute authority on the matchup. Coach Kimble actually discovered some rules rules for the long/short slide and block out rules that are really excellent. And Coach Olson concurred and adopted in his defense at Arizona.

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Do you prefer this or the Marshall 2-3?

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Breakthrough Basketball says: 6/17/2022 at 12:43:00 PM We highly recommend Al Marshall's Zone Defense. In our opinion, he runs one of the best zone defenses in the country and it gives you the most thorough explanation of zone defense we have seen. It's a really good 2-3 zone that is aggressive and uses good defensive principles. I think both work equally well. It all comes down to what you believe in and how well you teach the defense. I believe that... it's not "what" you do, it's "how" you do it. Like   1 reply   login   register Mark says: 6/17/2022 at 8:03:20 PM Agreed it's good I've ran it for several years. I've got some slower guards up top this year that I think may struggle to cover the arc and a backline that may be fairly interchangeable so I've considered trying the true matchup to bring the forwards out to stay on the wing man and the center out on the quick wing to corner pass. Like     login   register