Syracuse has surprisingly reached the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament, relying on its zone defense to get the job done.
The opponent in the Midwest Regional semifinal on Friday night is Duke, which scrapped its man-to-man defense pretty much entirely more than a month ago and went to a zone defense.
Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski picked up a large portion of the pointers on the 2/3 zone set-up from Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim when they spent more than a decade together on the staff of the U.S. national team.
"We've gotten better in the zone," Krzyzewski said this week.