I'm not sure I buy the assumption that we couldn't win a title with a zone. Why not? We have the kind of freak athletes to theoretically guard the arc pretty well, and rebounding shouldn't be an issue. Plus, we just beat the next-best team playing zone, and it wasn't exploited by arguably most zone-busty contender (UF) when we switched to it.
Also, we may have backed off the trying-to-get-5-second-calls-at-halfcourt thing, but I don't see where STF's claim that K has significantly dialed back overplay is coming from. See this play, for example:
- Allen (one pass away) is extended past the 3PT line in ball denial
- Trent (on the ball) is extended 7-8 feet beyond the 3PT line
- Wing defenders are fairly tight on the corner shooters and Javin doesn't even show on help
- We try to (sort of) hedge a 25'+ PnR and have Trent go over it, instead of just going under it
I mean, that's overplay, with all of its flaws. It limits "show" help from wing defenders (e.g. swiping at the ball and creating traffic without abandoning shooters), delays weakside rim rotations, and draws bigs away from the rim adds vertical driving space by playing PNRs so aggressively.
Lastly,
here's a good article on PNR defense options. I'm less opinionated about it this year, given how agile our bigs are, but the "zone up" strategy in the article = the "sink" strategy physics mentioned earlier. Honestly, it probably makes sense if you're always playing freshmen, regardless of who they are. It's just harder to fuck up.