Defense recommendations for small fast high school team

my experience in playing a taller team. we double down on the post as soon as the ball came to her side. 1-2-2 press from loren wallace ( contact coach silver.com) we lead 17-0 at the end of the 1st period. no press,no trap, no defense,==no win. also play m2m on all inbounds and sideline plays.switch all screens. do not look at the inbounder. play your man...

I lost my big man to an injury and like you have a smaller team overall. After working hard on teaching proper blocking out, hands in pssing lanes and calling picks and help, I came faced with 1 or 2 opposing players getting the majority of rebounds and easy layups. To combat that, I have started to teach a 5 offence on 4 defence in a 1-2-1 zone. By moving the ball around the outside perimeter, I showed the boys how to adjust the zone defence to cut off passing lanes inside, also when the ball does get into a post position either high or low; how the zone adjusts to close any path to the key while still protecting against the other offensive players cutting through. With only 4 defence it is tough but they get the idea quicker. Once they started to adjust well to ball movement; it forced the ball for outside shots. The next issue was to find an opposing player and box them out. I brought the 5th defensive player in to a 2-1-2 zone with the 1 being the centre. After a bit of adjusting to the additional player, they adjusted to ball movement well and for whatever reason, players adjusted better using a zone defence to find an opposing player to box out than they did man on man. Thus defence picked up more of the defensive boards than before. I played a centre for the opposing team and at 6'6 am almost 8 inches taller than my players. They boxed out better than the man to man. A zone defence was the way to go for this team.

Coach,

Your situation is probably more common than not to many coaches around the world.  The first and foremost goal is to extend the court and shorten the time clock.  Any tactics you use which are successful in reaching these two goals will help you. While this is a rather board statement, it none-the-less holds true.  It's difficult to score inside when the opponent has difficulty advancing the ball near the basket and has little time to do it before the shot clock expires.  One of the challenges however in extending the court is not to break down defensively in your assignments so that teams can attack your basket with numbers and with a rebound advantage.  Pressure only works if you can contain the attacking team, control where you want them to go, and do not significantly reduce your ability to rebound the ball.  It is sort of a double edged sword you could say. 

You could implement any number of extended defenses like John  Wooden's famous 2-2-1 containment press, or something more aggressive like the Run and Jump, or Jim Laranaga's Scramble Defense.  The goal of these defenses may or may not be to turn the ball over, but singular to both is to make your opponent eat up clock away from the basket.   At the Pro level they trap using a "1 and done" philosophy that has less to do with stealing the ball, and much more to do with only giving their skilled opponents offense 8-10 seconds to run only the 1st or 2nd option in their offense against tough pressure.  The more skilled offensive team can score if you give the more time and possessions.  Thus reducing the clock becomes a defensive ally.

In terms of half court ideas, you might take a look at Dean Smith's famous Point-Zone Defense, now used by coaches like Paul Hewitt at Georgia Tech which is a 1-3-1 match-up designed to keep pressure on the ball (a good thing when you are facing tall opponents which the ball can be lobbed to), and keep a player in front and behind any center player at all times.  It is less of a trapping defense then the traditional 1-3-1 but there are options that allow you to call "trap situations" to extend the court and clock.  You might also use a less conventional strategy such as playing Triangle and Two, where you zone up the interior so that essentially the post players must always play against 3 defenders, and use your "two" to take the ball out of the hands of the opponents best passer and or shooter.  If they have two shooters this defense doesn't work as well as you normally have to leave someone relatively unguarded.  However if your opponent has one offensive player that is more of a defender than offensive threat something like this might work as a change up defense.

Regardless of what you do to extend the court and reduce the clock, your kids will have to get aggressive on the boards and develop rebound radar.  Rebound radar is the sense of when the ball is up to the glass and the aggressiveness to pursue possession of the ball whether in our out of area rebounding.  Your "small" team must understand that they might not out jump taller opponents but nobody you play should be more aggressive in pursuing the rebound.  It should become a rallying cry for your teams season.

Good luck and I encourage other coaches to respond with their ideas here as well.