With modest success this season, teams have been throwing zone defenses at Arizona. The Wildcats have played nearly 25 percent of their offense against the zone, the 35th-highest percentage in college basketball. Overall, Arizona has been an excellent offensive team. Sean Miller’s group ranks among the top 15 teams nationally in offensive efficiency, touts a 57 percent effective field goal rate and – especially as it pertains to zone=busting – is making a healthy 38.2 percent of its threes (53rd nationally). On paper at least, Arizona would seem perfectly adept at breaking the zone. But in truth, when looking at the Wildcats’ offense versus man-to-man defense, Arizona ranks as the ninth-most efficient team in the country (per Synergy Sports). Against zone, however, and this may be where opponents are focusing, the Wildcats dip to 115th nationally at 0.97 points per possession.

Colorado’s Tad Boyle is Looking for the Arizona Sweep Tonight (USA Today Images)

Staring across the court at a roster featuring DeAndre Ayton and Allonzo Trier, I too would be seeking any advantage. It’s perhaps why Colorado head coach Tad Boyle, a staunch man-to-man advocate, exacted a zone defense last month against Arizona in Boulder and is likely to do so again in tonight’s rematch. Considering Arizona is about five points per 100 possessions less effective against a zone, Boyle’s plan is seemingly vindicated. Furthermore, the Buffaloes won that Saturday afternoon in The Keg; the ultimate vindication of strategic success. But also remember that Arizona is, indeed, a quality three-point shooting and offensive rebounding team, and that they’re fantastic at getting into transition (a zone-busting strategy). Theoretically, the Wildcats are well-equipped to beat a zone (and has done so in every attempt since). But the strategy goes well beyond nuance in numbers. Boyle used a similar zone against Arizona State just two days before he beat the Wildcats — on that night, at least, Colorado also beat the Sun Devils, which, over the course of this season, play more efficiently against zone than man (they are, after all, a great three-point shooting team). What gives?

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No team in college basketball has played more zone defense this season than Mike Hopkins’ Washington club. As a Pac-12 aficionado, you know that the Huskies’ new head coach was a long-time assistant (21 years) of Jim Boeheim at Syracuse. As a college basketball aficionado, you know all about Boeheim’s famous zone defense. Hopkins has brought the defensive scheme across the country, and as a result, the Huskies have been a pleasant surprise through the first half of the season. Considering its uniqueness and Washington’s early success in employing it, a forecasting evaluation of the zone for the rest of this season is worthwhile. Its basic tenet is engineered to dare opponents to shoot from long distance. At Syracuse, 44.8 percent of shot attempts against its zone come from beyond the arc, which is very high (11th nationally). Washington’s opponents, by way of comparison, are allowing 36.7 percent of the shots against them from distance, roughly equal to the national average. This gap is in part related to the Huskies’ faster offense, clocking in with the 71st-swiftest offensive possession average in the game (compared with Syracuse’s 325th-slowest). This increase in allowing long-range shooting comes as a big change from the former regime in Washington. Lorenzo Romar’s Huskies never allowed more than 30 percent of opponents’ shots to come from beyond the arc.

Mike Hopkins Has Instituted a New Regime in Seattle (USA Today Images)

Since Washington has seemingly announced its defensive strategy for the foreseeable future, how might the zone project on its new coast? To date, the gamble has paid off, as the Huskies through five conference games have “held” Pac-12 opponents to a league-best 27.9 percent from three-point range. Pac-12 teams are making 35.8 percent of their three pointers this year, 12th-best nationally as a conference. To try to understand what this might mean for Hopkins’ team, assuming he plans to continue to dare teams to shoot threes, the league has historically been average from distance. A peek:

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Evan Jacoby is an RTC columnist and contributor. You can find him @evanjacoby on Twitter. TT4 will cover four selected teams of interest – Syracuse, Indiana, Murray State, and UNLV – by tracking their ups, downs, and exciting developments throughout the course of the season.

Welcome to Tracking The Four! This new series reads just like it sounds, as we will be following four buzz-worthy teams across the country. Those lucky teams are Syracuse (current #1 team and a title favorite), Indiana (a feel-good contender), Murray State (undefeated dreams), and UNLV (the best of the West). With TT4, we hope to provide readers with interesting insights about each of the featured teams that helps capture the atmosphere of the programs throughout the rest of the season. Look for a full TT4 piece every Tuesday, as well as a shorter update later in the week. Each post will be loaded with highlights, lowlights, and tidbits about each team, as well as recaps from their recent play and a look ahead at their upcoming games. Conference play is well underway and there’s plenty of news to get to this week:

Kris Joseph & Syracuse are All Smiles Right Now (Getty Images/A. Lyons)

Syracuse Orange

• Trending UP Because… – They’re looking like national title favorites. The undefeated Orange (17-0, 4-0 Big East) remain number one in every national poll, including the RTC Top 25, with its consistently dominant play. They’ve beaten their four conference opponents by an average of 16.5 points, which includes two road games and two home games against ranked teams (Seton Hall & Marquette). Seton Hall has proven to be a solid and cohesive offensive team, yet the Pirates were blown out of the gym by Syracuse in a 75-49 thrashing. The Orange are the deepest team in the country with 10 meaningful contributors, and their patented 2-3 zone is as strong as ever. Jim Boeheim‘s team is now making bigger headlines on the court than off it (the Bernie Fine sexual harassment allegation was a big story), a refreshing trend for the sake of all its fans.
• This Week’s Key Cog – Brandon Triche. The junior guard led the team in scoring last week, going for 16 points at Providence on Wednesday and another 16 at home against Marquette on Saturday. He hit four three-pointers in each game with an impressive line of 16/7/4 assts and two steals in the victory over Marquette.
• Play of the Week – Point guard Scoop Jardine finds his go-to guy Kris Joseph in transition for a thunderous dunk from several feet away from the basket against Providence.
• Talking Point – Guard Dion Waiters, who comes off the bench, had this to say after the win over Providence: “I’ve never been on a team with subs like this. It’s crazy. We continue to get better and make each other better in practice every day. We’ve got some of the best guards in the country.’’
• Stats Central – Syracuse leads the nation with 37.5 points per game from its bench, further proving that they’re the deepest team in America. Also, their zone defense has been truly elite this season, as the Orange lead the country in steals (10.9 per game), are third in blocks (7.4 per game), and fifth in forcing turnovers (18.7 per game).
• What’s Next? – The Orange play at Villanova on Wednesday at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia (7:00 PM ET, ESPN2) against a struggling Wildcats team, but it’s still a rivalry game in which the Villanova crowd should be fired up and looking for the upset. Then, Cuse gets its second matchup with Providence, this time at home on Saturday (6:00 PM ET) as heavy favorites.

Kellen Carpenter is an RTC contributor.

While theoretically, the intricacies of basketball should provide for a near-infinite array of offensive and defensive strategies, we instead see a surprisingly few varieties of essential approaches. On the defensive end, simple man-to-man defense is the primary defense of the vast majority of college basketball teams. Other types of defense are less common, but the clear runner-up in terms of defensive schemes is 2-3 zone defense, which is usually what TV and radio people mean when they say “zone defense.” More specifically, when radio and television people refer to “the zone” they probably mean the version of it that is run by Jim Boeheim in Syracuse, and with good reason.

Hands Up in the Syracuse Zone (P-S/D. Nett)

It takes only the mildest interest in college basketball to know that Syracuse under Jim Boeheim has been a perennial contender for the national championship. Year in and year out, the young men in orange appear ready to take all comers each and every March. And aside from the constants of Boeheim himself and a steady flow of NBA-caliber talent, the other constant is the zone. Boehim isn’t just an accomplished practitioner of the zone, but a certified guru. His mastery of this defensive system and ability to impart that system to others has made him a coach in demand. When Mike Kryzewski needed a coach to teach the US Olympic team about the zone, Boeheim was the natural choice. The curmudgeonly coach, Syracuse, and the zone have merged into a monolithic juggernaut that seem destined to befuddle under-prepared offenses come tournament time. As such, the question of how to execute zone defense effectively isn’t as interesting to most teams as how to overcome it.

Now, on the topic of attacking a zone, I don’t have the benefit of the advice of smart scouts, assistant coaches, and the strategic gurus who are working hard to win their respective teams’ games. Instead, I get the second-hand advice of guys who are on television and radio, ex-coaches and ex-players, and the most pernicious and dangerous of strategic advisers, basketball writers. These folks tend to repeat, in unison, some familiar refrains. It’s almost inevitable that when I hear or read someone talk about the zone, they mention the same weaknesses: vulnerabilities to perimeter scoring and offenses that run through the high post. It’s what they seem to say almost every single time, and that’s fine. These approaches make sense when you watch the ball move against the zone: the ball is passed into a player at the high post, sucking in defenders from the perimeter or near the goal, and opening up either a three-pointer from the corner or a quick pass to a baseline-cutter making a move to the basket. So, a solid piece of conventional wisdom, right?

Well, maybe not. The mind is a funny thing, prone to remember triumphs more clearly than failures and generally to overestimate probabilities and degrees of success. Fortunately, even if our subjective memory and evaluation of past events isn’t reliable, we always have the box scores to turn to, and to those we shall turn. If the advice of the pundits and analysts is accurate, teams that run the zone defense should expect to have their opponents make three-point shots against them at a pretty good clip.

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We’ll be bringing you these Fast Breaks more frequently thanks our new intern who will be sending me the best of the web, which I will then filter and send out to you, our loyal readers.

• Seth Davis doesn’t think the NCAA tournament should expand.
• A bunch of bloggers trying valiantly, but failing to match the standard set by RTC’s own Zach Hayes. Searching For Billy Edelin has their own prediction for the field of 65. So do Shawn Siegel.
• RTC friend Jeff Goodman has made an all-freshman team that is pretty solid. I like the fact that he included Gordon Hayward (Butler) on there with all the BCS guys.
• Will Smith is a either a fan of Brian Collins or he is a devoted follower of Rush the Court. I’m going with the latter.
• Outside the Lines with a report on “package deals” in college basketball.
• Jameson Fleming drops some Zone Defense knowledge on you.
• Mark Schlabach makes the questionable argument that Elliot Williams is the answer at the point for Duke. So Jeff Teague having his way with you is a credential for good point guard play…but I guess its not that bad an argument.