Welcome to the hardwood hustle powered by PGC basketball. We believe in the value of a coach. We're here to educate, empower, and encourage you to lead like never before. In today's episode, TJ and Sam discuss how coaches should decide between primarily being a man or zone defensive team in their system.

It's a critical question to answer, and after listening to this episode, you'll be equipped to make the best decision for your team.

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All right, Lisa, thanks for the introduction.

Those of you that maybe are new listeners or just new to the show, that's a new voice,

and that is Lisa

Amira and you might or might not have seen her on our key five team. She's been with us for a

little over a year now and she has a ton of value. She was a division one assistant coach for many

years, the University of St. Mary's and we recruited her here to be a part of the key five

PGC Hardwood Hustle team.

So if you're wondering whose voice that is, that is Lisa.

And you'll hear her on many of our shows.

Sam, today we have a really, I think, important topic for coaches.

I think maybe a hot button topic or a decision they have to make on the regular.

And we're going to talk about should you or should you not play man or zone and when should you play man versus zone. And I'm going to break this into two parts for us, Sam. So the first part I'm going to break it into is just context, you know, kind of like age and stage. I think we probably, you know, agree with this. And there might be people or listeners that disagree with this, but we'll just talk in in terms of age and stage of when should people use zone. When should they not use them? And then we'll get to, you know, in part two, we'll get to competitive, you know, so let's just say that you're at an age that we agree that people should be able to run Manor Zone and what are the benefits of it? What are the things that might hinder your team? How should you use it? When should you use it? Do you have the right personnel to use it? So we'll go from a competitive standpoint in part two. But let's go ahead and jump into part one. And we're going to talk about, you know, just putting a in a little context to it age and stage i know you have some pretty strong feelings about zone defense and

when and what age it should be played at and how it might hinder the growth of a player

individually or players at a particular age and stage so what are your thoughts on that sam

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