2-3 Zone Defense: Taking Away 3-Pointers & Creating Turnovers

I still need to watch some more... but my initial take is that there is a Lot of the coach talking and not much of the players Doing. I'm sure the coach is smart, but I want to see the players executing and see their actions and the drills that they do to better implement the ideas into my practices.

I coach a high school girl's team at a small school. After watching this video last Summer I decided to implement it last season. I used it more in the beginning of the year. After the fifth game I used it sparingly. Against certain teams I didn't use it at all. This is my opinion after running it. The biggest advantage I found is it's uniqueness. It's difficult to run traditional zone offenses against it. Opposing teams will have to use practice time the week they play you to prepare for it because it will be the only time they see it all year. It definitely confused certain teams (I suspect the one's who didn't do a lot of scouting). Many timeouts were used by opposing teams to draw up something for it. It was more effective in the beginning of the year when teams had not seen it yet. The disadvantages were many for my team. Obviously the back side of the zone is extremely vulnerable. He didn't emphasize that as much as he should have maybe, but any coach with experience can already see that. Therefore your goalie better be BIG and QUICK to really make this work. Also your wing defenders better be quick, smart, and disciplined. IMO the wing defenders should be your quickest two on the floor, not your top two. Also remember just like your opposition has never seen it before, neither has your players. I greatly underestimated the learning curve for these rotations. By our first game we were still only about 90% with our rotations. And with this zone, a wrong rotation will lead to a wide open layup or three. So plan on spending a lot of time working on this in practice. Honestly even with the perfect personnel (huge fast goalie and lightning quick wing players with great instincts) I don't see anyone using this zone as their primary defense against big teams that pass the ball well. The back side is simply too vulnerable. I say you have to surprise them here and there with it. So in my opinion, unless you have the right personnel don't even bother with this defense. If you are one of the few coaches that have the players for it, you still have to decide if this defense is for you. You'll have to spend A LOT of practice time on it with drills centered around it. And IMO you'll only be able to use it against smaller weaker passing teams. And even those teams I would only use it for one or two possessions at a time. I will have most of my team back next year so we'll be using it again. But if I had to do it over I wouldn't have implemented it to begin with.

Other than the confusion from the jerseys, this defense is truly amazing and getting the opportunity to go to a Merrimack practice and see it in person myself, it is really cool to see how they work on it. If you are planning on using this zone, you would definitely have to work on it everyday. You would also really want a big who can defend the post, as teams try to work a lot of of high-low action on this zone.

Would rate it 5/5 except I agree with the other comments. It was confusing that the jersey colors weren't consistent to identify who was on offense and who was on defense. Had to watch it multiple times to make sense of it (which maybe wasn't all bad). Great system & easy to teach and implement. My HS team was able to pick it up fairly well with limited practice. I firmly believe that with more practice reps this could be a very effective primary defense.

VERY good information but also VERY strange the jerseys of the offense and defense were mismatched. It was needlessly confusing at times. Overall very good information that I intend to implement.

Interesting new concepts with the 23 zone rotations. I wish he would have had the practice players wear the same color for defense and a different color for offense. that is the only complaint i have. I like the new coverage concepts.

Not only is the zone unique but the rationale and concepts taught are fresh as well.
Nontraditional content always carries a premium with me as there are not many videos covering the same topic.