Defense: Versatility
If you can play a perfect offense, you can't lose. While this is true, its equally as true that if you can't play defense, you certainly can't win. Then what is the key to defense?
"Play hard on your man!" We've all heard and yelled this before. This system of aggressive man-on-man defense definitely works, and works best when you field a team of athletes who are bigger, faster, stronger, (and harder?) than the players on the other team. But what if you don't? What if you come across a team that has an arsenal of players more athletic than yours?
You try to play hard man defense, and time and time again, your players are juked left and right, up and down the field, open cut after open cut... Your opponents are used to strong, aggressive physical defense, and they don't even think twice when you bump and grind in the lane. Your force is being broken at will as they just throw right through the in-your-face marks. At this point, do you simply concede? Of course not.
It has always been my opinion that defense is about mixing it up. Never to linger too long on any style of defense. The hardest times I've had running an offense is when I don't know what's coming, and I have to constantly change the mindset of the way I play. On defense, all we have to do is make the o-line screw up. If we can do that using an array of tactics, hell, that's just as good as getting a layout in-cut d. The changes can be subtle; force backhand to flick to straight up; or they can be dramatic; man-on-man to zone to clam back to man. As a matter of fact, why not throw in a force middle, or a poach system on a ho offense? Get creative, be versatile. Nothing is easier than beating a defense with only one style of defense. Nothing is more devastating than figuring out a defense, finally, only to have it changed up on you.
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Also as a matter of principle you should try to learn as many different types of zones and forces that can be thrown/are used against you by other teams. Offensively, if you already have a vast amount of knowledge about what you will potentially be up against, you are just that much quicker to recognize and adapt to the defensive teams strategy. Defensively, you will be able to use cross over certain aspects of your game to others (for example, on a basic level, for a new player transitioning some of the awareness that is necessary to run a zone D can be extremely helpful when playing man D)