Air Force coach Jeff Reynolds said in the preseason he wanted to play more man-to-man defense, or at least have a fairly even split with that and a matchup zone. In the season opener, Reynolds said his team played just two possessions of zone defense.

Against Cal State Northridge on Thursday, Reynolds totally changed it up. He remembered playing five possessions of man defense, and that was only to see if his team could be a little bit better on the boards if it played man. Most of the night, the Falcons were in their zone, because Northridge isn’t a very good 3-point shooting team.

The versatility should pay off. If Air Force can play zone or man effectively, it could change its gameplan based on the opponent’s strengths, or even switch it up in the middle of a game. That will make the Falcons tougher to prepare for.

“It’s very nice,” forward Tom Fow said. “We do it balanced in practice. We emphasize both. That helps.

“It switches up on the offensive team so we don’t know what we’re doing, they have to adapt and that takes time.”

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.