Attacking a 1-3-1 Zone Defense

The 1-3-1 zone can be a difficult zone to attack, especially with long athletic teams.  It allows teams to play in passing lanes, as well as aggressively trap out of it. Therefore, I am going to provide some resources that you can use to attack the 1-3-1 zone defense.

The first resource we are going to look at has a nice action where the bottom defender of the 1-3-1 gets screened for a player to come to the corner.  This action is really good because often the bottom defender has corner responsibility. The other good screening action here is the diagonal up screen against the middle defender.  Typically, when the ball is thrown to the corner, the middle defender will drop.  With the screening of this defender, it opens up the dive and feed into the low post.  

Attacking the 1-3-1 Zone