I can’t say I’ve watched every minute of every game, but I don’t remember zoning up even on out of bounds plays. Muss may not teach it, and if you don’t work on it, you sure don’t go to it in crunch time in the Dance.
Maybe a match up zone from time to time. but not often that I can recall (we may have played it some earlier in the season when Vanover was getting more minutes). I suspect Muss is not a fan of zones with his NBA background.
Eric Musselman back on Feb. 5:
“We’re not a zone team. The one thing that I’ve learned in college is that there’s very, very few teams that are really good defensively that play both man and zone. Are there some? Sure, there are some. But when you coach a long time and put zone in and the other team scores one or two baskets against man, you can come into a huddle and guys can want to bail out and go zone. Have we worked on it in practice? Yes. Have we played more zone this year than last year? Yes.”
Thanks, Scottie. I figured you would know this.
Zone is the wishbone of basketball and Syracuse is Army. Most teams only use it situationally. Like when you’re getting killed inside. We don’t seem to have that problem very often. When we do, Muss prefers to extend his Defense and speed up the tempo.
Technically, Muss’ 2 man trap with a triangle behind is a zone. Momentarily anyway. Though they fall back into man. I don’t recall ANY zone this year…and I don’t think I missed a televised game. Of course, I wasn’t charting it…
They did play a little zone early on. It was one of those things in Mom’s letters. Don’t remember the game or situation, but I do remember him being asked about it.
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