Washington Huskies Mens Basketball Team Hit .500 In Three Steps

Step One: Commit to small ball lineup

This team right now is guard-centric.  If you look at the current projected roster:

No. Name                            POS   HT      WT    CLASS HOMETOWN
0 Bitumba Baruti                G       6-6     210  SO       Lubumbashi, Congo
1 David Crisp                         G       6-0    185  JR        Tacoma, WA
2 Dan Kingma                       G       5-10  155  SR       Mill Creek, WA
4 Matisse Thybulle              F       6-5     190   JR       Issaquah, WA
5 Quin Barnard                      G      6-0     175  SO      Bellevue, WA
–  Jaylen Nowell                   SG      6-4      175  SO     Seattle WA
–  Nate Pryor                        PG      6-1      165  FR     Seattle WA
–  Michael Carter III             SG      6-6      170  FR     Seattle WA
15 Noah Dickerson              F        6-8      225  JR      Atlanta, GA
22 Dominic Green                F        6-6      185  JR      Renton, WA
23 Carlos Johnson                G       6-4      235  SO     Centralia, IL
24 Devenir Duruisseau       F       6-8       240  JR      Palmdale, CA
32 Greg Bowman                 F       6-5       200  SR    Mountlake Terrace, WA
33 Sam Timmins                  F       6-10    275  SO     Dunedin, New Zealand

You find eight back court and seven front court players.

2-3 Zone Defense

Mike Hopkins arrived from the University of Syracuse, a school that thrived on the 2-3 zone defense. The 2-3 zone is a defense that amplifies the speed of guards in a tight formation like a pentagon. Each defender positions in a lane between offensive players.

This type of defense should work well with the teams current roster, as it will rely upon the team speed to react to the ball.  As the video highlights, this defense manages to negate many offensive sets the Huskies will likely face in 2017-2018.