Overload

Overload means outnumbering the defense. Mainly used as a zone offense term.

With the increasing popularity of zone defenses — especially at the high school and junior high school levels — it’s vital in today’s game to have a sound zone offense in place. And if you combine the zone offense with a solid man-to-man offense, your team will be hard to match up against.

The “overload” zone offense is extremely effective and can be adapted into lower levels of competition.

The basic concept of the overload offense is to bring all five players to one side of the floor and effectively outnumber the defensive players on the overloaded side of the zone.

For this to be successful, however, you must still utilize the backside of the floor to keep the defense honest, and to prevent them from making an adjustment to overload the same side as the offense.

With zone offenses of any kind, there are three rules that players must follow to be successful.

1. Spacing, keeping the floor spread. Offensive players must keep from standing next to one another, as this basically enables the defense to guard two offensive players with one defender.
2. Reverse the ball quickly. In this zone offense, when the ball is thrown into the corner, it must be reversed as fast as possible to keep the defense shifting and off balance.
3. Find the seams. Too often in a zone or continuity offense, you’ll see a player go to a “spot” on the floor because that’s how the coach drew it up during the chalk talk. Encourage players to move to the open spot on the floor and penetrate — taking the ball to the hole.