That he decided to run it as his main defense. I would be as adamant about not running a man to man defense when 99% of what you play is zone. MY has spent his entire career recruiting players like Fletcher Magee and Hunter Cattoor and Storm Murphy who would thrive in his system offensively and he needed to devise a defensive philosophy that doesn't accentuate their weaknesses (i.e. dont put them on an island and need athleticism to be efficient) So when you do things like change your defense, it only makes you less efficient. Because there are so many nuances to basketball and so many different things an opponent can do that you have to spend as much time as you possibly can mastering what you run the most. It is a lot easier to do that offensively than defensively. Likewise, if you do things like change the makeup of your roster without making wholesale philosophy changes youre only going to be a watered down version of what you'd like to be On top of that, if you change your roster AND you change your philosophy, then how much conviction do you have in what you were running in the first place? It is very rare for any coach (not just MY) to drastically change their philosophy and still be successful. It doesnt matter if the new strategy would make you more efficient if you run it perfectly...you dont believe in it as much, so you dont teach it at a level that will end with that kind of efficiency Jim Boeheim ran zone for his entire career even after teams picked uo everything about it. In a vacuum should he have switched to man? Sure. But the context is hed be a crappy teacher of man to man basketball...he doesnt believe in it. Hes not alone. It just doesnt work. Shaka Smart changed what he believed when he took the Texas job. It didn't work out. The instances where it has worked out off the top of my head are all places where you can recruit anyone at will and it matters a lot less what you run. John Calipari when from a ball screen heavy offense to the Dribble Drive motion that became popular in the 2010s. It worked because he had John f***ing Wall and he was just telling him to get down hill. Calipari doesnt run that anymore and hes on to something else, and its because hes kind of a crappy coach who has had the best players everywhere hes been. VT cannot do that. And I know that hurts the hearts of people who think the lack of success at VT is because there isnt enough big city thinking going on, but its a 100 year reality. When they become billionaires and decide to spend it on basketball then maybe VT can change their stars. Iowa got where it got with a system coach who came from a D2 school and then a mid major and brought those mid majors with him because their market inefficiencies gave him an advantage. If he ever tries to recruit athletes or go zone, it won't work very well. That's not something Iowa can do either, and they have Big Ten money