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These clowns should be embarrassed to be wearing Scarlett and Grey. Just an absolute disgrace how they're playing. I don't care if our entire starting 5 gets benched next game. Stop being a nice guy Matta and light a fire under their charmin soft azzes.

http://kenpom.com/

We're 124th in offensive efficiency and 2nd in defense. Matta's being an idiot if he says the defense is the problem.

this has to be the low point in the matta era. Losing to a .500 nebraska team is as bad as it gets. This is really surprising. I know their out of conference schedule was soft, but they are in danger of falling out of the top 25 all together. The whole team can't hit a shot. Hopefully they snap out of it.

I actually said that this year's team was going to be better than last year's team because it was more balanced.

Good call by me.

I think we'd be great if we played against a man to man defense. However, until we crack a 2-3 zone we're screwed.

Thad's offense against the zone is bad. Always has been. Not enough movement. Not enough swinging the ball. We run one elbow cut while the rest of the guys stand still on the perimeter. Sheesh, he could run a different coach's zone offense.

Inability to attack a zone is a college basketball problem, not just an Ohio State problem. Flip on any game where a team is playing zone and it's the same thing.

So, you are saying that there are not better offenses out there at attacking zone defenses?

Be careful w/your answer. I know more about this than you think.

That's not what I said at all.

Just that it's a widespread problem in college basketball.

I'd explain the X's and O's behind it but I'm on my phone and don't feel like typing that much.

I play in a rec league that has some pretty good competition. My team is about middle of the road.

We play almost exclusively a 2-3 defense and teams have a really hard time beating it. I know it's apples and oranges when it comes to comparing us to the NCAA, but at its base its true.

When a team is playing man-to-man, you can get away with "out-athleting" a team. You get mismatches, etc. But if a team plays a proper zone, that really takes away some of those mismatches.

The problem is playing a proper zone. When we do play man-to-man, I like to slack off a bit on purpose because it leads to a lot of steals. But in a zone, I just can't do that or we get killed.

I do love watching Syracuse's zone. Smothering.

Okay.........I misunderstood you. Sorry.

I was just trying to point out that Thad's zone offense is really primitive. We don't attack the heart of the zone enough and you gotta move the ball inside-out and around the perimeter. You gotta get them moving laterally in the zone. It opens up 3 pts. shots, holes inside the key, and can leave one side of the baseline unguarded.

I used to love playing against a zone. I could shoot with the best of them, but had no dribble. So not having to beat a guy, and jack up clean jumpers made me more efficient.

It only took me about 6 years, but I figured out that a lot of teams in my rec league lived and died by the 3 pointer. So, our zone's philosophy is take away the three and let them drive and get 2s all day. We've beaten teams that are a lot better than us with that approach.

yea that's the type of zone Syracuse has been using for years. Have length along the perimeter to cut down on the 3's. The weakness is in the middle. Mid range jumpers are there all day if you attack it right. Plus you pound them on the glass.

Our biggest problem all year is that we can't rebound. So we can't even exploit a zones major weakness.

plus scott, and craft can't hit a jumper to save their life. Smith Jr has been wildly inconsistent. But who knows, they came on late a year ago, after watching the same crap for most of the year.

It is a big problem. Most of these kids grow up, as one poster said, out-athleting everybody on the court.. that's how they are used to playing... and beating a zone requires you to be precise and most of all, PATIENT.... They all want to run, they all want to get up and down the court, they don't want to use the whole shot clock so they end up taking bad shots and they end up in horrible position to rebound. Firing 3s over a zone is the lazy way to try to beat it and unless you have a JJ Redick caliber 3 point shooter that really scares the other team, they are probably going to let you keep shooting them.

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2-3 zone gives scrub schools a chance to compete.

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That's an interesting comment, especially on a board like this that always seems to go old school when it comes to football... people want defense, running game.... not spread option and throwing it 50 times a game.... Well a good zone defense is the basketball equivalent of old school, slow the other team down, make them play fundamental basketball, force them into mistakes.. if that makes the school that can do that effectively a "scrub school" then so be it. For me it's more fun to watch a team that actually executes basketball than it is to watch a team that is going 100 mph all the time, has as many turnovers as assists because they are playing on the edge of out-of-control all of the time but gets the occasional SportsCenter dunk out of it once in a while...

I can only WISH that Maryland would play a little more like that. They have good athletes but they have a team basketball IQ of about 2.5. Absolutely stupid turnovers constantly, poor shot selection firing up contested 3s early in the shot clock, they'd rather let somebody get past them and play for the big block than actually move their feet and play defense... it's frustrating to watch.

I'm kind of confused. What does the 2-3 zone have to do with playing high octane offense? A team can do both. Doesn't Syracuse thrive off of transition offense? Also Wisconsin plays extremely slow, but tough man to man.

one of the biggest problems in college basketball is that the philosophy that 3's & dunks are the only good shots has become so prevalent that alot of players/coaches seem afraid to take anything else.

in the early 90s, I thought we were seeing the death to the 2-3 zone when we had big guys like Webber and Laettner stand at the elbow as a facilitator to the offense. they'd either take the FT (when open) or pass it for a layup, 3pter, or *gasp* mid-range shot. You cannot cover all the passing lanes from that spot on the floor and someone is always open.

but, big guys who can pass have someone become a rare breed. and, the guards/forwards taking mid-range shots even more rare. It was one of the reasons I loved watching Caldwell-Pope last year. He would take the 10fter and defenses seemed perplexed that they even had to guard that space on the floor.

ah well.

You can thank the San Antonio Spurs for how defenses play now and days. Pop lets you have the midrange jumpshot. In terms of % it's the worst shot in basketball.

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I'm kind of confused. What does the 2-3 zone have to do with playing high octane offense? A team can do both. Doesn't Syracuse thrive off of transition offense?

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Yes, because they generate a lot of turnovers and force bad shots.. if the other team knew how to play offense against their zone defense, it would slow their offense down considerably.

Plus, running out of a 2-3 zone is easier because your guards and big men are already generally in a lane...

And Wisconsin plays slow because they want to, because it's the best tempo for the personnel that they have...

I'm not saying that anything is 100% guaranteed... Just that in general, as somebody else pointed out, shooting 3s and getting dunks is all college basketball players seem concerned with any more... Used to be the way you beat a zone was drive and kick, move the ball around the perimeter, and the ideal shot was a step in mid-range jumper from 12-15 feet.. nobody wants to shoot that shot any more.

Interesting college match-up on Sunday.. Clemson @ North Carolina...

Why is this interesting you ask? Why is two slightly above average ACC teams interesting when Clemson is probably overachieving so far and UNC is probably underachieving so far?

Clemson's lifetime record in Chapel Hill is 0-56. That's hard to do. Granted UNC has been the prohibitive favorite in most of those games but you have to upset them once, don't you? Everybody else has. Since the first time Clemson played at Chapel Hill, the Tarheels have built 3 new gyms, and the one thing all 4 gyms have in common is that Clemson has never won in any of them.....

This is one of those years where the teams are fairly even and Clemson is actually playing better basketball... Not many 0 fer streaks go on this long in big time sports... Does it end this weekend?

completely unfair, but the only Clemson game I have seen this year was their game against Pitt...off that game, it didn't look like they can beat anybody

Recruiting sites really whiffed on the Harrison twins. They are nowhere near deserving of the hype they were given. So are a lot of kids on Kentuckys team.

the one guy they sure didn't whiff on was Jabari Parker. that guy was amazing v. Pitt 2 nights ago. his shot wasn't falling early, so he just started getting teammates involved by passing and crashing the boards. that was one of the better performances I have seen this year and the guy only shot 7/19 (but scored a somewhat efficient 21pts because he was getting to the FT line).

Parker is very good and he is getting better because Coach K is teaching him how to play basketball. As he has learned to dial it back and be a part of a team instead of being "the guy" like I'm sure he was in HS, the team is playing much better as well.

This is hysterical. Every single damn team we've played since Sparty runs a zone against us. Frickin Penn State is having success with it.

This is going to be controversial and not popular, but Craft and Smith need to go. They absolutely suck on offense and kill us. People say you need to "play both sides of the ball." That's usually applied to guys that don't play defense. I'm sorry, but you need to play competent offense as well.

We're going to miss the tourney.

Yea we have no good wins, maybe notre dame. 2 horrible losses in nebraska and penn state. This has got away in a hurry. They need to play loving a bit more. need more scoring.

Quality win for the Cincinnati Bearcats tonight even though they almost let it get away, and Louisville isn't what they were last year.

It's still a solid win anytime you come out of Freedom Hall with a win. (no I'm not calling it the KFC Yum Center)

Hopefully Craft and Lenzelle get their crap together tomorrow. At Wisconsin is gonna tell me a lot about the character of this team. Amir Williams describes this team perfectly: soft and lazy. Matta needs to start Sam in place of Shannon. Then you tell Craft no more walking the damn ball up the court in transition. You run your azz off or Shannon comes in to do it for you.

That Notre Dame loss looks worse and worse every day...theyre 2-6 in the ACC right now. Yuck

Craft and Smith look mentally checked out. It's a shame for how great Crafts career has been to look like this.

Hopefully the PSU loss lit a fire under this team now.

they seem to have. Craft did a much better job of creating space to finish his shots tonight.

also, holy cow Florida is good. they are losing by 2 to Mizzou right now, but are just missing some of their easy shots. they are physically and athletically imposing their will and are just straight-up outclassing the Tigers. I expect the score will reflect that as the game goes on.