131 Zone Offense

The 131 Zone Offense

The 131 Zone Alignment that we will be discussing in this post is an example of the “Gaps Concept”. Essentially, we are placing players into the gaps of the zone defense in an attempt to get two players to guard the basketball.

At the High School level, we want something simple, easy to flow into, and flexible enough to use against different types of zones. Expecting our players to work on an opponent-specific zone offense for 1-2 days and expect high-level execution is silly. We want to build a Zone Offense concept that applies to nearly every zone and is mostly reliant on player skills and decision-making.

In a Gaps Concept we are not scripting an action, but simply asking players to create advantages through their passing, gap spacing, and drive & space game when attacking those gaps. As we discussed above this 131 alignment is something that we can easily adapt to use against 23, 212, 32, 122 & even 131 Zone Defenses.

In this post, I'm going to dive into the core components of the 131 Zone Alignment, the teaching points associated with interior and perimeter players, and 5 plays that you can flow into from this alignment.