MAILBAG Grant Wahl will periodically answer questions from SI.com users in his mailbag. Your name: Your e-mail address: Your home town: Enter your question:

Got plenty of responses from last week's query for innovative coaches in addition to the six innovators we said we'd like to sit down and talk shop with.

You must really like offense. The only guy you talked about defensively is Mike Anderson at Missouri. What about the guys known as the best man-to-man (Coach K) and zone (Coach Boeheim) defense coaches in the game? Didn't your mom ever tell you that offense wins games, but defense wins championships?
-- Brian, Little Rock, Ark.

Guilty as charged: I'm an offense nut. But I'll play some defense here by saying that West Virginia's John Beilein is just as interesting for his 1-3-1 zone as he is for his labyrinthine offensive schemes. Keep in mind, too, that those six coaches were hardly the only ones I consider innovative, just the ones I happened to choose last week.

Re: innovators, I would pay lots and lots of money to watch Ben Howland teach defense. His UCLA team plays defense the way it is meant to be played. I always imagined the perfect college basketball team would play offense like a Roy Williams UNC team and defense like a Howland UCLA team.
 -- Michael Denbow, Louisville, Ky.

Got several responses on Howland, whom we've already tagged Builder of the Decade for his work at UCLA and Pittsburgh. We've been tossing hosannas at Howland all season, and for good reason, but if we're going by a strict definition of innovators I don't know if I'd include Howland on the list. To me an innovator isn't necessarily someone who does something really well (in fact, some innovative coaches don't win many games), but someone who's a tinkerer, who does something new.

To which we add the latest response to our ongoing discussion of one of our favorite innovations: the Amoeba defense. Over the past few weeks we've given credit for the Amoeba first to Jerry Tarkanian and then to Tim Grgurich ... and now to another former Pittsburgh assistant, Fran Webster:

I hold in my hands at this moment the book Basketball's Amoeba Defense by Fran Webster. Webster assisted Buzz Ridl at Pittsburgh in the 1970s as his defensive coach and is the true originator of the Amoeba. I have used the defense often as a high school coach, and it is fun to teach.
 -- Joel Nasset, Bloomington, Minn.

While talking of coaching innovations, I couldn't help but notice five of them were on offense. While the Nolan Richardson/Mike Anderson 40 Minutes of Hell is unique, there is a different kind of defense that is commonly found in the playbook of most schools: the match-up zone. And despite the controversy at the end of his coaching career, there would be no better person to teach this style of play than John Chaney.
 -- Bill Ratkus, South Burlington, Vt.

Good point, Bill. If I was going to pick four coaches I'd want to talk to about half-court zone defense, I'd go with Chaney, Beilein, Syracuse's Jim Boeheim (whose 2-3 zone probably won the '03 title as much as any of his players) and Rick Majerus (whose triangle-and-two against Arizona in '98 remains the benchmark of modern-day defensive masterstrokes). For all the derision zone defenses get for being the refuge of "lazy" coaches, it's had a lot of success. Just look at what Florida's Billy Donovan did to put the whammy on Ohio State last weekend. Thad Matta's crew is going to be seeing a few more zones now as the season progresses.

I would love to find out more about Pete Carril and that beautiful Princeton offense. As a freshman in college from 2000-01 I got to see the beginning of the emergence of Air Force basketball first-hand thanks to Joe Scott (plus my roommate started so it got us out of training!).
-- Travis Pons, Erie, Ill.

One of these days I'll convince the pooh-bahs at SI.com to let me post my entire Sports Illustrated article on the spread of the Princeton offense from January 2003. I've never had more fun reporting a basketball story for the magazine. So many coaches loved to talk about it that I had a hard time getting some of them off the phone.