Why smart college hoops coaches have kept a fading defensive art form in their back pocket

The beauty of college basketball and its 360-plus teams is the variety of strategies each squad chooses to deploy across the landscape: offensive sets, defensive structure, tempo and everything in between.

Over the past decade, though, college hoops has been drifting toward a state of defensive homogeneity. Man-to-man, long the gold standard, has been on the verge of complete takeover. Influenced by successful postseason runs from Baylor and its no-middle structure, Houston’s high-pressure looks and a huge influx of drop coverage against pick-and-roll plays, man-to-man slowly but surely established a dominant footprint across the sport.

However, while the number of true “zone teams” continues to dwindle, the ability to show an opponent a zone defense look retains immense value in the right context. Zone can disrupt the flow of a game, slow the pace of play, diffuse a potentially great after-timeout play call or limit an opponent’s out-of-bounds playbook. Intelligently crafted and well-timed alterations to defensive structure have given smart teams an edge toward victory at all levels of college basketball, and creating value in the margins can be the difference between a successful year and a disappointing one.

Smart coaches are noticing the positive effect zones can have. Many great college basketball defenses sprinkle in zone at select times, using it as an added variable for which opponents must prepare. Even if man-to-man is the base, these teams realize what a secondary wrinkle can be worth.

Per Synergy, the 2024-25 season was the first time overall zone usage did not decline across Division I since 2015-16. The drop had leveled off over the past few seasons, a decade-long mass exodus to man-to-man finally hitting its critical mass. This past year, mean zone usage actually ticked up by the thinnest of margins (8.01 percent to 8.03 percent).

In the 2015-16 season, 31 teams played zone on more than 50 percent of their possessions. By 2022-23, that number had plummeted to 10, and in 2024-25, it was seven.

But there are still 163 teams — nearly half of Division I — that play zone on more than 5 percent of their possessions. In a standard college game of 65-70 possessions, that may only mean showing zone on three or four trips down the floor. With the parity around the sport, though, those tweaks can have an outsized impact on the outcome of the game.

That number has also taken a nosedive in the past decade: 271 teams played zone at least 5 percent of the time during the 2015-16 season. But if half the country is still deploying zone looks, then it is certainly not bordering on extinction. Plenty of coaching staffs will continue to subtly deploy zones in an effort to squeeze out a few extra stops, and maybe the trends are pointing toward a shift in the strategic calculations of coaches across the country that might show up when teams need it most this coming season.

To understand why zone is creeping back into fashion, start by switching sports.“If you only have a fastball, it better be 99 miles an hour with movement,” joked BYU assistant coach Will Voigt, who serves as the Cougars’ defensive coordinator. “If you’ve got off-speed pitches, the fastball looks a lot better.”

Voigt’s analogy is apt: Man-to-man is still the bread and butter of nearly every team in the sport, but for teams where that fastball is not blowing hitters away, mixing in a curveball can keep foes guessing and change the tenor of a game.

“I always want that curveball,” Voigt said. “I’ve seen it at every level — NBA, G League, Olympics — if you throw something that looks different, it makes them stop in their tracks to make them figure out what it is. Even the most basic zone, if you roll it out at a time they’re not expecting it, it can catch them off guard.”

Per Synergy, the Cougars played zone on 15.6 percent of their possessions last season, the 50th-highest rate in the country. They surrendered 0.903 points per possession in those alignments, nearly identical to their 0.901 points per possession allowed in their base man-to-man. The BYU staff believes that without those zone curveballs, their man-to-man defense would have likely rated noticeably worse.

Voigt specifically mentioned two contests where zone made a major difference. Against West Virginia late in the regular season, the Cougars moved off man-to-man to slow the Mountaineers’ on-ball maestro, guard Javon Small. It made it much harder for Small to break down the defense off the bounce, and BYU blew out West Virginia 77-56.

Then in the Big 12 Tournament quarterfinals, BYU went to the zone to try to temper a sizzling Iowa State squad. BYU surrendered just six points in 10 second-half zone possessions, helping erase a nine-point deficit en route to a 96-92 victory.

Even when it’s working, though, one of the trickier parts about zoning is figuring out how long to stick with it.

“That’s where zone gets a bad rap,” Voigt said. “The second the opponent hits a 3, everyone is up in arms and wants to go back to man. You’ve got to give it enough of a sample size to let it work.”

It is a scary proposition for coaches who fear an opponent shooting onslaught, but if foes are already dicing up your base man-to-man, why not make them execute against an entirely different scheme for a little while?

Yes, BYU was an offense-tilted team that landed well outside the top 50 on defense in analytical rankings. But some of the best defensive teams in college basketball mixed in zone, too. Maryland and Texas A&M, two top-10 defenses per KenPom, rolled out zones on roughly 10 percent of possessions. Both teams had incredibly formidable groups of athletes and individual defenders, but their coaches, Kevin Willard and Buzz Williams, found value in forcing opponents to deal with a different look at times.

Other teams mixed in the zone for varying personnel reasons. Michigan, under first-year head coach Dusty May and defensive coordinator Mike Boynton, used it to help make their dual-7-footer lineups with Danny Wolf and Vlad Goldin more viable. The Wolverines finished 12th in KenPom’s defensive efficiency rankings while using zone on 5.8 percent of possessions.

Marquette, on the other hand, lacked the same kind of size and physicality inside with stretch big man Ben Gold playing center, but the Golden Eagles still finished among the top 30 defenses, in part thanks to their decision to zone on 7.4 percent of possessions. Using different looks helped insulate Gold’s (and Marquette’s) vulnerability at the rim and allowed aggressive guards like Stevie Mitchell and Chase Ross to hunt for steals from within the structure of a zone concept. Forcing turnovers was the Golden Eagles’ biggest defensive strength.

Mid-major teams are not immune to this trend, either. In fact, significantly more zone is played at D-I’s lower levels, with mid-majors posting the highest zone usage in the nation.

In fact, the top 22 conferences in terms of average zone usage were all mid-majors. Big East teams were the most frequent zone employer in the high-major ranks, using it on 4.9 percent of possessions.

Bradley has been one of the Missouri Valley’s best defenses for four years running, and Brian Wardle’s squad went zone on 7.1 percent of possessions. That’s despite playing in a metaphorical zone desert: The MVC ranked 30th out of 31 conferences in zone usage in 2024-25, averaging just 3.3 percent zone leaguewide. Wardle’s Braves have found real success zigging while opponents zag toward man-to-man.

One of the most undervalued reasons for using zone is simply cutting into your opponent’s prep time. If foes have to prepare for the possibility of a strange amoeba-esque matchup zone coming their way, that diverts from the time they can spend pinpointing weaknesses in man-to-man rotations or pick-and-roll coverage. That’s a small edge, but a bunch of small edges add up to a real advantage over the course of a season.

Duke’s Jon Scheyer dialed up a zone defense in multiple key moments last season. (Robert Deutsch / Imagn Images)

Teams have found a variety of different scenarios where zone can provide an edge. Stopping a singularly talented scorer like Small is an obvious use case, but simply changing the flow of the game and forcing the opponent to pause and re-evaluate can have a massively positive effect. That can be true for even the most elite of units, sometimes against subpar offenses.

Against Wake Forest Jan. 24, Duke trailed 45-41 with eight minutes remaining. The Blue Devils — who had played just five possessions of zone defense all year to that point, per Synergy — threw out a 2-3 zone. The Demon Deacons scored just once in the next six possessions, allowing Duke to seize the lead en route to a 63-56 win. In the ACC Tournament quarterfinals against Georgia Tech, Duke dug itself a 26-12 first-half hole. Head coach Jon Scheyer again went to the zone, and even after Cooper Flagg left with an ankle injury, it helped spark a 21-2 run that allowed the Blue Devils to take control of the game.

Sometimes, it can be that simple. Hurling a few 12-to-6 knee-bucklers can thwart the opponent’s smooth rhythm. Suddenly, the fastball works again, and the entire momentum of the game shifts.

Teams also tend to lean heavily on zone in situational settings. Much like a soccer team employing zonal marking on a corner kick or free kick, going zone against a baseline out of bounds (BLOB) or sideline out of bounds (SLOB) play simplifies the defensive assignments and minimizes the impact of the opponent’s crossing and screening actions.

At UNC and Kansas, former coach Roy Williams was well-known for going zone out of a timeout to foil a meticulously planned play call. Many teams adopt a similar approach now, going to a different defensive look even just for one possession to take away the possibility of a pristine play call earning a quick bucket.

This defensive switch also cuts down on the prep time needed for scouting reports. Teams generally design plays to score against man-to-man; after all, it is the most commonly run defense. A defensive staff does not have to spend an exorbitant amount of time specifically preparing its players for a menagerie of opposing play calls if it can throw out a zone. BYU is one of those staffs.

“I stole from watching other teams do it,” Voigt said. “It really kind of aligned with our head coach. … He didn’t want to walk through a bunch of underneath out-of-bounds plays. That had a lot to do with it.”

Not every great defense requires an off-speed pitch — far from it, in fact. According to Synergy, the reigning national champion Florida Gators played zone on 0.0 percent of possessions this year (Synergy says they played one possession in zone, but after reviewing the tape, it looks an awful lot like a blown switch to me). Houston and Michigan State played 0.1 percent and 0.0 percent, respectively.

In fact, of KenPom’s top 10 defenses nationally, eight played man-to-man on at least 98 percent of possessions.

Truly elite man schemes remain the pinnacle of the sport, but for teams lacking a deep pool of great defenders/athletes, or for coaching staffs that simply want to have a “break in case of emergency” recourse, a 2-3 or matchup zone look can be the perfect banana peel to throw in the road.

It’s easy to see the drastic drop in majority zone teams and lament the homogenization of college defenses. Part of the sport’s beauty, after all, is in the broad variety of strategies and styles that are deployed across 364 teams (and counting). But plenty of programs across the landscape are still choosing to keep a zone look in their back pockets.

In a sport that can often come down to razor-thin margins, gaining an extra edge on a few possessions per game can have an exponential impact. Stealing a couple wins with a zone wrinkle is enough to alter a team’s path from the fringe of the bubble to sneaking into the NCAA Tournament. The data suggests we have finally hit rock bottom of zone usage, and smart staffs throughout the country will continue to find value in being able to mix up their defensive offerings.