First post so don't kill the newbie! So I was discussing some of Duke's struggles this year, especially in the tourny, with my father (a college head coach; no he's not big time and no you don't know him) and we started bouncing the idea of switching to the pack-line theory of defense. Hear me out, I know it is the exact OPPOSITE of what Coach K does. No pressure in the passing lanes, probably give up more threes, dont' force as many turnovers, etc. BUT what it is designed to do is keep the ball out of the paint by A. closing down entry passing lanes to the post, and B. keeping the help defenders closer so that they can help on drives/take charges, etc. instead of forcing post players to leave their men to help, without having to cover a lot of distance. In other words, the guy guarding the man that is one pass away isn't up in the passing lane anymore and only one player is outside of the "line" (about a 2 feet inside the three point line). Everyone else is inside. So only the guy pressuring the ball is extended. It also emphasized closing out with "high hands" to contest the jump shot. I'm sure a lot of you already know this, so just ignore my poor attempt at briefly explaining this. I bring it up because look at who uses it: Wisconsin, Xavier, WSU, UCLA (I think), Pitt, Southern Illinois to name a few. See a theme? A lot of these teams are usually around in the tournament for a while. At least four of them are in the sweet sixteen this year. With Duke's struggling front line, anyone think this would be a possible solution? The last few years Duke has also struggled stopping dribble penetration and its wings have been too extended to help, forcing big men to step up, often resulting in easy dunks/layups. Do I expect K to switch an entire career's worth of philosophy? No, but I just thought it would be an interesting discussion for us "monday morning quarterbacks". And yes, I know we killed Wisconsin this year, but I think its fair to say that they are much, much better than the team we played in Cameron. Thoughts? Sorry if this has been hashed out elsewhere.