Everybody uses a zone defense against Missouri. Even a pro team would use a zone against the toothless Tigers, and zones are illegal in the NBA.
Missouri is the worst-shooting team in the Big 12 Conference. The lowest-scoring, too.
Let them shoot from the outside.
That’s the standard defensive ploy against Mizzou.
Unless you’re Bill Self. Kansas University’s second-year coach lumps a zone defense in the same context with root canals, the stomach flu and the bubonic plague.
Self emphasized his anathema for zones late in the first half of Monday night’s 73-61 come-from-way-behind victory over a non-vintage Mizzou club that already has lost twice to Kansas State this season.
The Tigers, aka the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, were spreading the court and taking the Jayhawks to the basket in the first half. They were saying, in effect, “You can’t guard us” and, sure enough, the Jayhawks couldn’t.
Missouri scored 36 points before the break and an embarrassing 18 — half of them — were posted in the paint. Time and again, MU players blew past KU defenders for easy underneath goals.
Surely, Self would dump his ineffective man-to-man to start the second half. But he didn’t.
“I challenged them,” Self said about his halftime exhortations. “I said, ‘Can you guard ’em, or do we play zone?'”
Quickly, Missouri bolted to a 41-30 lead against the Jayhawks’ torero man-to-man.
Still no zone.
“I hate playing zone when we’re behind,” Self explained afterward. “And we haven’t practiced a zone in a month probably.”
Finally, coming out of a TV timeout at 11:02 and trailing 51-50, Self went against his SOP and junked the man-to-man for the first time at the urging of aide Tim Jankovich.
“Jank had been talking about it,” Self said. “We just waited until the time was right for the lineup they had on the floor.”
The time was right, all right.
Missouri missed two outside shots, and, on the other end, Aaron Miles ignited the crowd with back-to-back highlight-film passes to J.R. Giddens and Christian Moody to propel the Jayhawks to a 54-51 lead.
Minutes later, however, when Mizzou’s Glen Dandridge drilled a three-pointer — the Tigers’ only trey (out of nine attempts) in the second half — Self abandoned the zone.
Would we see it again? Darned right.
Kansas emerged from the under-eight-minute TV stoppage in a zone once again. And a little more than two minutes later, Kansas had turned a three-point lead into an 11-point bulge (66-55).
That was the ball game, folks. That was the end of the zone and the end of Missouri’s hopes of stealing a win in Allen Fieldhouse.
“I think it was a great move by coach,” said Miles whose second-half performance — 10 points, nine assists — was a textbook on how to play point guard.
Added Moody, who had five points during that decisive two-minute plus run: “I don’t think they were expecting it. I think it really surprised them. We haven’t played it much this year.”
It may have surprised the Tigers when Kansas went to a zone, but Mizzou’s players shouldn’t have been stunned to see a zone. Unable to prove they can hit from the outside, the brick-throwing Bengals have been facing zones all season.
Perhaps Kansas would have pulled this one out by staying in man-to-man throughout. The Jayhawks clearly had more energy in the second half. Miles and Keith Langford were dynamos.
Langford, in fact, decided to do unto others as they had done unto him by driving to the basket on successive possessions with about 14 minutes remaining to give the Jayhawks their first lead (48-47) since late in the first half.
In other words, you can talk all you want about strategy winning games, but players still have to produce. And the Jayhawks did.
Still, Self’s eventual decision to go to a zone was a classic example of strategy providing a catalyst for individual performance.
Langford, too, applauded the coach’s jump-shift on the defensive end, adding in his own inimitable way: “I’ll stand on my hands if it prevents them from getting a shot.”
Langford defending while standing on his hands? Now that really would have surprised the Tigers. Not to mention everybody else.