1-1-3 Zone Defense

Adam describes the alignment as a point defender, three post defenders, and between them a second perimeter defender just above the free-throw line. That makes the 1-1-3 a defense in two layers, and he draws the line between them along the free-throw line, with X1 and X2 handling everything above it. The three back defenders cover from the free-throw line extended down to the baseline.

This page numbers the defenders the same way throughout. X1 is the point, X2 the high post, X3 and X4 the left and right sides of the back line, and X5 the middle. Adam calls his three back defenders interchangeable, and his own diagrams swap their numbers from one picture to the next. So the jobs in the diagrams are his, given to whichever defender stands in that spot when the ball moves.

Why Coaches Call It a Match-Up Zone

Adam built his "113 Match-Up" around many man-defense principles. Randazzo's 2019 breakdown says the same thing about Baylor's version. It "is not a pack-it-in type of zone," he writes. "Instead, it features a lot of man defense principles, with the ability to trap and double team ball handlers almost anywhere on the floor."

In practice your on-ball defender plays the ball handler tight, and the help behind looks like help-side man-to-man. Baylor used that to its advantage. Randazzo notes the Bears would shift from the 1-1-3 into true man-to-man "to confuse and stall offenses." Adam's team, short on speed and athletic ability, "managed to frustrate almost all" of its opponents.

Not a 1-3-1 With the Numbers Shuffled

The 1-3-1 strings three defenders side by side at foul-line height and leaves one alone on the baseline. It is built to trap. The 1-1-3 keeps three defenders home on the baseline and one in the high post, and its first job is pressure on the ball. Corner to corner, one 1-3-1 defender runs the baseline alone. In the 1-1-3, three players share it.

Every rotation in the 1-1-3 answers one question. Who takes the ball now? The sheet below answers it for each pass and dribble Adam diagrams. The four passes around the zone start on the left, both skips land on the right, and the two dribble diagrams work the right side. Mirror any of them for the other half of the floor. Before you print it, edit any row your staff decides to play differently, and the printout keeps your version.

Four Habits That Hold the Rotations Together

• Close out on the high hip. The first defender to a wing catch stays on the ball handler's "high hip." That steers the ball toward the corner and makes the pass back to the top harder.
• Sprint back to the block. When the ball goes to the corner, the old wing defender heads for the post. Adam is blunt about the pace. The player "must sprint, not slide, in order to deflect any quick post entries."
• Call the switch out loud. When a corner dribbler heads back up the sideline, X2 meets the ball at foul-line height and yells "Switch!" so the corner defender knows to go back to the post.
• Move too much. Adam told his players that if a mistake is to be made, "you'd much rather have it come from too much movement rather than from too much standing still."

The Pass Into the High Post

Neither source walks through a high-post catch, so the sheet leaves that row to you. Here is what the rules already give you. On a wing entry, X1 and X2 both drop onto the line with their backs to the baseline, which means a high-post catch from the wing lands between two defenders. A catch from the top is the open question. Agree on it as a staff before your first live rep and type your answer into the last row.

The first pass to a wing is where the two versions of the 1-1-3 part ways. In Adam's version a back-line defender closes out from the block. In Baylor's version, as Randazzo describes it, the two guards trade places, X2 stepping out to guard the catch while X1 slides down behind. Two forwards who started on the wings take away the corners.

Pick by your roster. The guards-out version asks your two top defenders to trade the ball and the high post all game long. Randazzo calls them "interchangeable," and the trading puts "two of the quickest, ball-hawking type defenders" where offenses most want to break the zone. If you have two guards like that and long forwards, go guards out.

Adam's version gives the first wing closeout and every corner closeout to the back line, so those three need quick feet as well as size. Our suggestion is to keep one version per season. Mixing them mid-season can put two defenders on the same wing catch.

The high-post column matters more than it looks. A 2-3 starts with the foul line empty. The 1-1-3 starts with a defender standing on it. Randazzo explains why that pays off. Against a two- or three-guard zone front, he writes, an offense can get going by screening the primary defender from the inside. Against a 1-1-3 that is harder, "because the defense features two very capable defenders able to easily switch on the screen and deny dribble penetration."

So choose by what your opponents do best. A team that likes to screen the top defender of a zone is the opponent the 1-1-3 is built for. A team you want to trap into turnovers points you to the 1-3-1, as long as you can live with the far corner. If ball screens are the part you still need to teach, the coverages a defense can choose from are laid out in pick and roll basketball.

Coaches who use the 1-1-3, or match-up zones like it, give four reasons.

• Your team runs out of legs in man-to-man. Adam's young team "did not have the ability to play a full 32 minutes of man defense" and was exposed late in games. Once they committed to the zone, "success came quickly."
• You want a change of pace. Even for a coach committed to man-to-man, Adam calls it "a fantastic change of pace that doesn't cause a drop-off in the intensity level of your players."
• You want to change looks inside one game. Baylor moved between the 1-1-3 and true man-to-man as needed, according to Randazzo.
• Your own offense needs a match-up zone to practice against. Lute Olson said so about the match-up zone he put in at Iowa, in a video quoted by ALLSPORTSTUCSON(opens in new tab). "It was important for us to put one (matchup zone) in so that our players had day-to-day work against the matchup zone." Over time, he said, "we found that it can be a very effective defense."

Keep it on the shelf against guards who live on the drive and kick. Randazzo calls that attack "like kryptonite to any zone defense," and the 1-1-3 is no exception. And leave it out entirely where your competition's rules ban zones. In England's and Ireland's junior competitions, that covers every age group through under-14.

Maybe you're scouting a 1-1-3 team, or building a scout team to prepare your own defense. Start from Randazzo's list of what works against it.

• Line up two guards at the top. Offenses facing a 1-1-3 "will instead go with a two guard attack at the top, make the initial pass wide to get the defense moving and rotating, and then attack from there."
• Drive and kick across the zone. A dribble drive, then a kick across the defense.
• Use bigs who pass out of a double. The short corner is where the zone traps, so a big who catches there and finds the open man turns the trap into a shot.
• Load the high post and the skinny post. With players in the teeth of the zone, the defense has to guard the key fully, and the perimeter opens up.
• Overload one side. Two shooters on the same side, both able to drive, force the defense to play man-to-man on the wing and the corner while it still guards the post.
• Keep cutting and screening. Randazzo's verdict is that the 1-1-3 "requires a motion offense with a lot of chip screens and physicality." Standing around the arc and swinging the ball plays into it.

One pass to cross off. "You never want to throw a skip pass against a 1-1-3 zone," Randazzo writes. "It's easy to defend and is a shot clock killer." The two skip diagrams on the rotation sheet show why. Each catch already has someone assigned to meet it.

If your offense already runs on drive-and-kick rules, the 5-out offense guide teaches the drive, kick and relocate habit this list depends on.

USA Basketball's youth guidelines, written with the NBA, are recommendations. USA Basketball calls them "guidelines and recommendations for those administering basketball competitions," and each league decides whether to adopt them. In the US, check your own league's or state association's rule before you put a zone in with a young team. Basketball England, Basketball Ireland and Victoria's junior league (VJBL) go further and write a no-zone ban into their competitions. English match referees administer it, the VJBL Administration reviews complaints and video in Victoria, and Ireland lists it in its national underage rules.

Where a no-zone rule is enforced, the 1-1-3's man-to-man look stops protecting you. These rules judge a zone by what defenders do, so a match-up zone can guard the ball like man-to-man and still break them behind the ball.

Sources checked October 2026.

Basketball England and the VJBL both check what happens to a cutter through the key. In the 1-1-3, the back three guard the area from the free-throw line extended to the baseline, so a cutter who crosses the lane meets whichever of them is standing there. An official might read that as a switch. Or as a zone.

Before the 1-1-3 Is an Option

If your competition follows one of these, the 1-1-3 waits.

The waiting years are still useful. Adam's 113 Match-Up "incorporates many man-defense principles," and those principles work at any age. Closing out on the high hip, fronting the post, sprinting back to the block and calling a switch are all man-to-man skills. Teach them in man-to-man and the zone, when it comes, is a new shape around habits your players already have. Our basketball defense drills are a good place to start for closeouts and help defense.

One Rule for the Middle Defender

The defensive three-second rule is the one X5's spot runs into. Basketball Ireland applies it from U12 to U14. A defender who spends more than three seconds in the key without actively guarding someone within arm's length gives away a technical foul after a first warning. Picture X5 parked at mid-lane with nobody near. Of the four levels beyond youth play in the rules table of our 1-3-1 guide, only the NBA calls it. High school (NFHS), college (NCAA) and FIBA rules apply three seconds to the offense alone.

Adam mentions drills he ran daily during the install, but they are missing from the online version of his article. So the order below is our suggestion, built from his rules. Give each step its own block in your basketball practice plan and move on only when the step runs clean.

1. Ball-call walk-through. Five defenders, no offense. You call a ball spot from the sheet and all five move. Start with the four passes around one side, then flip.
2. Dribble moves and the switch call. Play the dribbler yourself, or have an assistant do it, through the sheet's three dribble situations: the dribble entry, the dribble from wing to corner and the dribble out of the corner. Every time the corner defender passes the dribbler to X2, X2 calls "Switch!" loud enough for the whole floor.
3. Skips against four. Four offensive players move the ball, skips included. Freeze play whenever a closeout arrives after the catch.
4. Live five-on-five. Let the offense attack the way the beat-it list above describes, so your defense meets the two-guard front and the short-corner big in practice first.

Who plays where depends on the version you pick. In Adam's bigs-out version every back-line defender closes out at some point, from the block to the wing, from the post to the corner and from the weak-side post on a skip. In the guards-out version X2 goes out to the first wing pass, whichever guard then holds the high post chases a high skip, and the forwards deny the corners. Watch closeouts and on-ball defense in the candidates for each slot before you settle the lineup.

Keep the Install in Striveon

• Save each rotation as a drill in your drill library, draw it on the basketball court step by step and link it to your Defense skill set. If you start from your sport's starter content when you set up basketball, that skill set already holds On-Ball Defense, Help Defense, Closeout and Defensive Rebounding.
• Build the week's session from those drills with structured training sessions, and rate your slot candidates in athlete development, where every evaluation keeps its date.

Is the 1-1-3 a match-up zone?

In both versions on this page, yes. Both sources run it with man-to-man principles on the ball and help-side positioning behind it. You can also play it as a pure area zone, but the rotation rules above assume the match-up version.

How is the 1-1-3 different from the 1-3-1?

Look at where the help behind the ball lives. In the 1-3-1 a single defender guards the baseline, so a pass to the far corner is that one player's job. In the 1-1-3 three defenders share the baseline and a second guard already stands at the high post. The comparison table lists what each shape gives up first.

What did Michael Jordan say about zone defense?

At the 2001 All-Star Game, Jordan made "an impassioned plea" to the NBA's competition committee against legal zones, according to the Chicago Tribune of April 1, 2001(opens in new tab). "If teams were able to play zone defenses, he said, he never would have had the career he did." The league went ahead regardless. NBA.com's history page dates the Board of Governors vote to April 12, 2001(opens in new tab), with the illegal defense guidelines gone from the 2001-02 season.

What is a 1-2-2 zone defense?

A 1-2-2 is one defender out front, two at elbow or wing height, and two low near the blocks. Next to the 1-1-3 it moves one back-line defender up a row. Nobody starts at mid-lane, and nobody guards the center of the foul line.