Boeheim Chaney Tarkanian Pitino I can't name anymore off the top of my head, but I also couldn't tell you what coaches have run man to man exclusively. Mapping coaches to defensive philosophies is not something I'm able to do. But the Tarkanian example carries weight. And you would have to agree with that as I specifically recall a conversation or two about the crazy goodness of Runnin' Rebs half court defenses, which were zone.
Look everybody: captain stat cherry picker guy. He's at it again. What is syracuse in TO%, Block%, and steal%? Riddle me that.
Tark used the Amoeba because he had elite athletes however you can not build a program exclusively on the Amoeba. Tark also played m2m.
Louisville plays almost no man to man in the halfcourt now. In fact, by the end of his Kentucky tenure, Pitino had pretty much made man the default call if the 1-3-1 got broken. UNLV was undoubtedly great in the halfcourt. Of course, they had three guys who went on to be elite level NBA defenders. They could have played any defense and would have been awesome.
Dumb conclusion. Yeah, I know. I heard you the first time. The only reason somebody puts a single word response there is if they're worried about exposing themselves as a full retard if they actually attempt to form a sentence or two.
Didn't I say something in an above post about effectiveness with elite athletes? I think I might have.
Not as many elite athletes as the North Carolinas and Arizonas at that time. The amoeba helped mask the lack of great players 7-10 at Vegas.
Yet, it's a conclusion that guys like Hank Iba, Don Haskins, Bob Knight, and Mike Krzyzewski, to name a few of the plethora, have reached.
By your last sentence, I'm taking that even if you don't believe a zone is a better product, a team playing zone and playing it well has no less defensive upside than a team playing man. And, yes, Stacey Augmon was [dadgum] amazing.
Three of those four openly admitted they used the zone to mask deficiencies or perceived disadvantages they faced. One has almost abandoned the zone for man to man as he's coached at power programs with full rosters.
In 1980, you could have used the same line of reasoning to argue that the forward pass was an ineffective offensive strategy. Nobody said it is a majority defense. Bueller! Bueller!
No, why would you put players in a position where you have to fight human nature? Any zone makes responsibilities less concrete. When that happens, people are less accountable and tend to drift. When you play man to man, there's never any doubt as a good friend of mine in the D-I coaching ranks likes to say "who [uck fay]ed that one up."