Zone offense question

[Thrill1]

Someone with a greater understanding of basic zone offense fundamentals help me understand why our basketball team continues to struggle with this. We seem to throw it around the perimeter with no gap penetration and no post flashing to the middle, therefore waiting for a last-second one-on-one move or deep three attempt.

Now lately, some of those shots are going in and Sword is getting to the hole as he did a few times last night, but overall it's very stagnant.

[thedawg]

We cant shoot consistently so we never get the zone to spread out

[Irondawg]

It's frustrating but it's some of what you said - we don't move a lot without the ball, but to me the bigger problem with our zone defense is how slowly (and poorly) we pass the ball. Against a zone there are several way to attack, but my favorite is to create an overload (meaning you get 1 defender to have to cover 2 guys) or you rotate the ball very quickly and aggressively and create an opening within the rotation.

Getting an open outside shot against a zone should be relatively easy, but we struggle with even that b/c our ball movement is so slow. Watch our girls - they move the ball around much faster than our guys.

[NewTweederEndzoneDance]

A good attack will get it to the elbow of the FT line area, which opens up a ton of lanes in a zone - down to the other big on the opposite block, kicking to the corner for an open look, to a cutter coming across the baseline as the defense slides to prevent the pass to the opposite block, swinging it to the other side to keep the defense moving and opening up even more lanes, driving it from the elbow and creating more open lanes, etc...

Teams that don't try to get the ball into the middle of a zone have trouble against it unless they can shoot a team out of the zone. We can't shoot and other teams generally lag back into their zone to try and take away our ability to get into the middle of the zone, which often leads to us not even trying. We really need a deadly shooter or 2.

[Johnson85]

Someone with a greater understanding of basic zone offense fundamentals help me understand why our basketball team continues to struggle with this. We seem to throw it around the perimeter with no gap penetration and no post flashing to the middle, therefore waiting for a last-second one-on-one move or deep three attempt.

Now lately, some of those shots are going in and Sword is getting to the hole as he did a few times last night, but overall it's very stagnant.

If you can shoot well from three, a zone is pretty easy to handle. If you suck at shooting, you have to be very good with your zone offense to break it down. We are not very good at all with our zone offense. Combine that with unreliable shooting, and you get horrendous looking zone offense.

[tcdog70]

we have shitty point guards by SEC standards and a Coach who can't figure out a zone and how to beat it when you have nobody that can shoot.

[Political Hack]

I've seen Ray line our team up in a 2-3 offense against a 2-3 zone. I was done then. You don't attack a zone by putting a man in each defenders zone. You split it. You go 1-3-1 against a 2-3. You almost have to have someone running the baseline against a 2-3... or at least simulating that to force them to guard the corners against a shooter. We don't.

I think he knows fundamentals, but he doesn't know a damn thing about how to score points.

[DudyDawg]

The soft spots are the baseline short corners and the free throw line. Whether you get there w the pass or dribble doesn't matter. We use the pass (don't have skill to dribble). Those are the only two spots in a zone where all five defenders have to TURN and look at the ball, thus leaving others open to cut off their butt or spot up. Last night we actually did a pretty good job of getting the ball to the soft spot; the problem was what we did with the ball when we got there. Too man turnovers and times we simply kicked it out. When you get the ball to the baseline or high post, there's no excuse not to get a good shot almost immediately. Rays adjustment to the zone wasn't half bad last night. We just wet our panties when you get it in places to create.