ve him.

Pope has said because of his team’s size, which includes Haarms, Lowell, 6-11 Richard Harward, 6-9 Baxter and 6-9 Kolby Lee, the Cougars could play a lot of zone defense and they should improve their rebounding production.

“I have coached zone defense before in a change-of-pace way at times. It’s not a place where I’ve lived. But certainly, it’s hard to look at our roster and not say, hey, you’ve got to at least make that a part of what you do with the length we have,” Pope said. “It allows us to be incredibly long and incredibly deep. (Last season) we were scratching and clawing just to stay alive on the defensive glass. With this frontline, the expectation is that we’re going to compete at a high, high level on the defensive glass and manufacture offense on the offensive glass. We have a chance to be really great on the offensive glass, which is an important part of the game that we didn’t really have the depth or size to explore at a high level last year. It gives us a lot of versatility.”

He acknowledges zone has not been his thing but it absolutely will be this year, and of course should be. This is a team that should see many 2nd and 3rd chance points. A lot of pick and rolls between our bigs with everyone crashing the boards. Lot's of dunks, layups and tip-ins. Our points per possession should really be outstanding.

Conversely, with the zone defense and the bigs we have, we're going to be limiting teams to one chance much of the time. I imagine there will be a lot of emphasis on box-out discipline.

Please, please, let there be a basketball season.